Lost my F: drive

I downloaded and tried to install a Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package (x86). I had downloaded it to my F: drive (portable Lacie 160 Gig hard drive) and when I executed the file (vcredist_x86.exe) it acted very strangely and finally gave me an error meesage that it couldn't find enough disk space to install (I had about 60 Gig free on that drive and 70 Gig free on my C: drive). So, I just closed that error message window and forgot about trying to install that package.

About 30 minutes later I did a normal shutdown and went to bed. This morning when I booted up my system everything seemed OK until I tried to read the F: drive. After about a minute I got a message from Windows XP that said the drive was not formatted and did I want to format it now.

Does anyone know of anything I can do to read this file? Or even read parts of this drive. It was my main back-up and there was stuff on there that I don't have anywhere else, either on my system or on CDs.

I trying very hard to not go out in the garage and get a large hammer and beat the cr** out of my system and send a package bomb to Microsoft. (Just kidding).

 

How does one 'slave it to another computer?'

 

I found an article (via Google) that suggested I use FINDNTFS.

I have since determined that this program is available as a free download from http://www.partitionsupport.com/utilities.htm a web page of Svend Olaf Mikkelsen, who created these programs.

Does anyone have any experience with these programs?

I'm a little shy about downloading and installing any programs at this point.

 

Yes, I did that (my wife's XP).

However, I had placed a version of PCInspector File Recovery and I checked the file with it.

It seems to be able to read the individual files.

Making headway. Get back to you later today.

 

Now that I've verified that I will be able to recover all the files on that USB F: drive, using PCInspector File Recovery, I have this question.

In my reading on the subject of recovery, this was mentioned -

The first file stored on an NTFS partition is the Master File Table(MFT) which is essentially a listing of the names, properties and locations of all the other files in the partition. This is referenced by the operating system to access individual files.

NTFS stores a backup copy of this file. Data restoration software will attempt to access or restore a copy of the MFT in order to access files on the partition.

I think that is what has become corrupted (or lost) on my F: drive file.

Is there anyway one can find that copy and use it to restore the original MFT, thus eliminating the need to copy and write all those individual files to another drive?

Just a thought. It would save me a LOT of time (and effort).

 

Yes, and it did not seem that anything happened (checked Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors - I was afraid to check Automatically fix file system errors, since everything I've read about today emphasized that I should not do anything that would cause a write to the file).

I looked at the Task List and nothing was running (98% idle). Tried it twice. The window tab just sits there and lets me click the Check now and Start buttons.

Under the General tab, the file is shown as 0 Unused, 0 Used. Just a big blue disk.