Hard drive recovery?

Hi,

Hoping for some help. I have not found this specific problem on this site so here goes.

History:

My friends PC is a Dell desktop with a Maxtor 5T020H2 20G HD running some installed windows OS. The OS was upgraded to XP Pro and was working just fine.

Problem:

The Dell suddenly no longer recognizes the HD during boot up, but it does recognize the HD is installed in the bios.

Troubleshooting:

I checked the power supply and it is putting out the correct voltages and the HD spins up just fine.

I configured the HD as a slave and put it into my computer and it is recognized in the bios, the device mgr (device working properly), and I can see it in windows explorer, but when I try to access it in explorer, disk not formatted is the response.

I ran the program Get Data Back to confirm there is still data on the disk and there is, but errors 1 and 23 keep popping up.

Question:

Is there a problem with the registry?
Can the disk be reformatted somehow without losing the data?
Can the HD be restored to working order?
Will I have to recover the data somehow and trash the HD?

Thanks for any help

 

Welcome to Major Geeks otter00.

Ok...
First off...
Anytime I upgraded a computer from a lower OS to XP...
It totally roasted in about 2 to 3 weeks flat. Permanently.
I suggest the next time you change to a newer OS...
You get a new hard drive... install the new OS... Then recover data from the old OS drive.

Now...
It sounds as if your MBR (Master Boot Record) got toasted.
Best way I know of recovering this with XP Pro is to first set your CD up as first boot in BIOS...
Insert the XP CD into your computer...
Restart...
Chose to install...
Let it check for a prior OS.
Then it will ask you weather you want to overwrite the OS...
Or weather you want to repair the OS.
Chose to repair.
About 75% of the time this will make your XP well again.

 

What OS are you running on your computer? If you are running Win98, it maybe that it can't recoginize an NTFS formatted drive.

 

If he did an upgrade from anything other than Win2k it wouldn't have reformatted to NTFS. I ran into a simular problem and did have to reformat but when I went in to do my upgrade I didn't have any data to lose so I told it to do the full install instead, worked much better that time.

There are ways to recover the data but it usually takes a profesional grade forensics recovery program. There may be something that can be used on sourceforge.net but I can't guarantee it.

 

It was just a question on my part, but it is possible to install Win2000 as well as XP on on FAT 32 partitions. Just a matter of curiosity!

 

THX PCJinx,

I tried to your suggestion and it turns out this issue is in the 25% range. I have installed a clean version of XP Pro on a new HD and will try to do some data recovery from there. If you have any suggestions on data recovery programs I'm all eyes. I will post progress as it happens.

Also THX tmiller67,

I'll check out sourceforge.net


otter00