My primary hard disk, which is partitioned, went bad and Windows no longer recognizes it. I can't boot from it. Windows XP Pro doesn't recognize it as a slave, either. It thinks it's a new, unformatted drive.

I don't want to lose my data, but I want to try to do fixmbr to see if that will work before I try the tough data recovery mess. I bought a new hard disk and want to copy the bad disk exactly as it is to the new disk. How can I do this if Windows doesn't recognize it?

If someone could point me to some programs, it would be great. Then I could have a clone of my bad disk to work with. That way, if fixmbr screws stuff up, it will be no big deal because I'll only be working off a clone, anyhow.

Please help? Any programs?

Thanks,
Eric

Hi

You should first check your system memory. Try memtest86 or memtest86plus.

Next get a hard drive diagnostic. One is available free generally from the manufactures website. If not visit Ontrack Kroll for a generic trial diagnostic - Data Advisor.

If the diagnostic can not see the drive, I'd replace the 80wire ide cable for good measure. The failure sounds sudden, so you might only need to try a reseat the ide cable on the motherboard.

Once you have diagnosed and know the system is in good order, you can then think about recovery procedures.

The manufacturer's web site should also have a cloning program that you could `try'.

I would be carefull not to do too much to that drive before trying to recover the data.

Spinrite 6.0 is a utility that is supposed to find and repair many hard drive problems but it is expensive (about $90).

It takes a long time to run because it checks every portion of your drive for errors but might be worth the cost if it does the job.

Maybe someone here has used it for recovery and can give their opinion of it's worth.

The web site is www.grc.com and they have a lot of info there. Not sure if their tech support would give an opinion about whether or not their product would help you.

Try GetDataBack for NTFS, it works great!