Hi, i have problem with corrupted or bad sectors in a FAT32 partition and not able to do data recovery from the partition. Due to problems in startup of Windows 2000 professional, I had to delete the MBR from my primary master drive. I have 2 Seagate harddisks ST340810 ( having Win2000 installed in the primary drive(6GB = 3+1+2GB partitions), another ST36422A having four 10 GB partitions. The problem now is with one of the partitions in the latter 40 GB harddisk.. I am able to see the folder and its contents but not able to access,copy or read it.Is it might be bad sectors or b'cause of MBR removal. Can anyone help me in revocery of the data on the drive..? any tools ? any software ?

I have used Knoppix several times and it worked a treat to save data files off a corrupted OS. This will work only if the mechanical harddrive is working okay. If the drive itself failed this won't work. Knoppix is actually a full-blown Linux OS that runs entirely off your CDrom. It loads into memory, and it is a full operating system.It will read NTFS files and you can access the major parts of XP including explore and Control Panel. It's very easy to use. You must download the .iso file, and then just burn it to a cd and you have a full Linux OS on your CD. Boot from your CD, and Knoppix will load. Download link: http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html Click Mirror.AC.UK (England)... be sure to click the "http" link, not the name. ACCEPT the responsibility disclaimer. Click KNOPPIX V3.7-2004-12-08-EN.iso Make sure you click the EN verison for English-there are other languages. 699MB download, so use broadband. Good easy Tut to get you started, although you can figure it out easily yourself: Knoppix Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime; Then industry pollutes the water and kills all the fish.

Is there a version of Knoppix that is all English language? I downloaded it several times last month to use in data recovery and the best English version still had the icons in another language so I could not understand what each one was for. I could see the data but just could not access it and send it to another drive. Finally gave up and used my most recent backups which resulted in some data loss.

Mine has entirely English including icons. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime; Then industry pollutes the water and kills all the fish.

I've used a couple of versions of Knoppix. Both were mostly in english. However some of the help files were written in German.

Ranchhand Do you remember where you got your version?

The MBR is just for booting purposes. It has nothing to do with the partition table. That in itself is easy to restore with fdisk /mbr. All you really need is some type of a utility that can scan the partition table and restore it from the backup table. Once the partition table has been restored you should be able to regain access to everything in that partition. It's been a while since I've had to do this so I don't have any links available. Just do a web search for do it yourself partition recovery or partition table recovery.