neo Posted December 16, 2011 Share Posted December 16, 2011 Hi all, yesterday i was finally getting round to putting my holiday pictures/video from 4 usa trips over the last 5 years onto DVDs to share with the rest of the family from my external USB HDD (200gb) windows recognized the drive, started copying over the said pictures/videos to work with backup copies, got half way through when a error pops up, saying something like this "folder is inaccessible and can not be accessed" - @*!# in a mad panic i managed to copy over all the files i could, out of 92GB i got around 50GB used a few disk manager progs i have, to the find the MBR and MFT are both corrupt, tried to repair the mbr, now windows doesn't even recognize the drive at all now, i could use windows disk manager to get it back but don't want to cause more problems quick google, lead me to use a prog called all "active@ UNDELETE", found a copy on one of my cover discs way back from 2009, a quick scan showed i could recover a lot of my files BUT none of the folder structure and file names,which given the amount of pictures i had would be pain in the arse to sort out any ideas on what to do next, suppose i could do a quick format of the drive which should restore the mbr/mft then use "Piriform's Recuva" software (used it before on SD cards/ internal HDD) works very well to say it's free, not sure if that would restore the file names tho HELP Cheers Lyndon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
narcotix Posted December 16, 2011 Share Posted December 16, 2011 I've had similaar issues with file recovery programs too... If I can't recover the data with the HDD as it is then I normally just do a quick format as you mentioned and then try again ... So far it's always worked out ok ... Good Luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris`I Posted December 16, 2011 Share Posted December 16, 2011 We had quite good success with Ontrack EasyRecovery on the missus brothers HDD when it was corrupted. Give me a shout if you want the details Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ekona Posted December 16, 2011 Share Posted December 16, 2011 I'd be looking at something Linux-based to sort everything out, although exactly what I couldn't tell you as I'm no expert in that field. Should be able to run Ubuntu or similar from a USB key and then go from there. I'd be very tempted to leave any kind of formatting alone, and worst comes to the worst I'd be sending the drive off to a specialist recovery firm. It may cost you best of £200+, but what price memories? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ds2000 Posted December 16, 2011 Share Posted December 16, 2011 As above, I've seen many disk problems over the years and they can be a real pain! OnTrack is pretty decent and can be found for a good price Also any sort of Linux boot CD, they are quite good these days and can mount your drives and allow you to copy between them. (http://www.ubcd4win.com/index.htm) Other things to check are the file system on the external disk (make sure it is NTFS as FAT32 has a limit on path size and file size) What's displayed in Windows disk manager? It might just be it needs a drive letter assigning.... If its got a drive letter Open a command prompt, type "chkdsk x:" (x being your drive letter, e:/f:/g: etc) and report back with the results (This command is read only so you won't have any issues) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beavis Posted December 16, 2011 Share Posted December 16, 2011 We had quite good success with Ontrack EasyRecovery on the missus brothers HDD when it was corrupted. Give me a shout if you want the details +1 I think we have been here before Chris iirc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris`I Posted December 16, 2011 Share Posted December 16, 2011 We had quite good success with Ontrack EasyRecovery on the missus brothers HDD when it was corrupted. Give me a shout if you want the details +1 I think we have been here before Chris iirc Indeedy - you pointed me in that direction Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neo Posted December 16, 2011 Author Share Posted December 16, 2011 thank you all for the speedy and very helpful replies i'll have a bash at the weekend when i have more time, linux could be a good option, got loads of distros knocking about, ubuntu seems pretty decent Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neo Posted December 16, 2011 Author Share Posted December 16, 2011 As above, I've seen many disk problems over the years and they can be a real pain! OnTrack is pretty decent and can be found for a good price Also any sort of Linux boot CD, they are quite good these days and can mount your drives and allow you to copy between them. (http://www.ubcd4win.com/index.htm) Other things to check are the file system on the external disk (make sure it is NTFS as FAT32 has a limit on path size and file size) What's displayed in Windows disk manager? It might just be it needs a drive letter assigning.... If its got a drive letter Open a command prompt, type "chkdsk x:" (x being your drive letter, e:/f:/g: etc) and report back with the results (This command is read only so you won't have any issues) ubuntu couldn't mount the drive so went back to windows assigned a drive letter, running chkdsk now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neo Posted December 16, 2011 Author Share Posted December 16, 2011 ok it was worth a shot C:\Users\******>chkdsk l: The type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is Pictures. WARNING! F parameter not specified. Running CHKDSK in read-only mode. Corrupt master file table. Windows will attempt to recover master file table from disk. Windows cannot recover master file table. CHKDSK aborted. C:\Users\*********> onto the next software scan which i will do tomorrow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HaydnH Posted December 16, 2011 Share Posted December 16, 2011 Try "fdisk /mbr" or "fixmbr"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beavis Posted December 16, 2011 Share Posted December 16, 2011 ok it was worth a shot C:\Users\******>chkdsk l: The type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is Pictures. WARNING! F parameter not specified. Running CHKDSK in read-only mode. Corrupt master file table. Windows will attempt to recover master file table from disk. Windows cannot recover master file table. CHKDSK aborted. C:\Users\*********> onto the next software scan which i will do tomorrow Have you tried the Ontrack Easy Recovery software Lyndon? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neo Posted December 16, 2011 Author Share Posted December 16, 2011 ^^ check yr pm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris`I Posted December 16, 2011 Share Posted December 16, 2011 Seems to be working Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neo Posted December 16, 2011 Author Share Posted December 16, 2011 Try "fdisk /mbr" or "fixmbr"? i can recover,hopefully, all the lost pictures with the software suggested will try the above just to see if that does restore the mbr just in case it's needed again Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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