Can Windows forget a parition any day?

[techmass]

Hello you guys!

I am in need of any suggestions or help on this issue that has been a headache for the last three weeks. I have a hard drive with three partitions. One day I get up, turn my working computer on and when I tried to open the partition where I have all my files I get a message that says "Hard drive cannot be read, file maybe damaged or corrupted.

I had one OS in partition one ( 0)
I had second OS in partition two (1) This is the bad partition
and I had the third partition just to save files (2)

I have used several things to get access to the HD but so far I can't.
I have tried Spinrite and no luck
I have tried teskdisk but it does not read the partition to recover files

I have tried Scandisk does not dect it.
I have tried chckdsk but it does not detect the partition either
I have look everywhere to see if anything could illuminate the road to a safety but nothing.


so far the only thing that has read the files inside the partition is VirtualLab but the amount of data is so vast that the quota I would have to buy to get all of it exceeds my budget.

The only thing that I have not tried is connecting installing Windows in a new hard drive and connect this drive to it as a slave. Though I am a bit skeptical about it since I know it could ask me to format the drive or the partition itself.

What could I do? Anyone had ever had the same issue? I will get thankful for any suggestions or software you may recommend to repair a partition like this.

[Nathan H]

Hi,
If it were me, I would connect the drive as a slave, via my USB - SATA/IDE dongle, ensuring the jumpers are correctly set to Slave, and the working PC's HDD Jumpers are set to Master,

This process has worked for me in the past,

If the O/S does ask you to format the drive say NO!

I'll have a look through my software and see what programs I have that may be able to help.

Just out of Curiosity how much data do you need to retrieve.


(Can you not access the data you require from the O/S in partition 0?):cool:

[otto]

Partition magic is pretty good at telling you "whats going on with the partitions. If partition magic un-obtainable you may try (win xp o.s.) control panel / computer management / disk management...It often will give about the same info. Ideally it would be SO MUCH better to slave the hard drive into a "good working" pc and do a data recovery. I would seriously consider backing up data on other partitions because if the 1 bad partition is caused by the hard drive starting to go bad, then it is VERY likely the entire hard drive is on its way out...and it will take the rest of your data with it.
Good Luck

[Jory]

I would use a bootable partition tool to check whether it can see the partition. You could use GParted, it's free and shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

[techmass]

Hello again!

Hey Nathan! I am considering what you suggested although I have to say that I tried connecting it to another computer as a slave but no luck! I have not tried your USB suggestion but it sounds like a good idea.

Otto I appreciate your suggestion. I forgot to mention that I tried to use Partition Magic 8 but no luck. The software sees the partition but when I try to access it I get an error with a number. It seems that the path to get to the partition is definitely corrupted or damaged.

An Jory, I have not tried that software so I will give it a shot this weekend. So far all the suggestions are magnificent. I just wish that I could have more time to try more options and that my patience takes me a bit further.

As I mentioned before, I tried Virtual lab again and it does gives me errors when reading the partition but once I click on "ignore errors" it does see my files. Again I saved a whole bunch of files in there in (Gigabites) that it could take days to retrieve them with a small amount of quota.

As another choice, I am considering getting a blank hard drive and get it as a master and connect my bad hard drive as a slave. Then I would install a fresh OS in the new hard drive to see if I can get at least a new route to the bad hard drive... what do you think? Would it work? Would I waste my time? would it still be the same?



Thanks a lot you guys! I will keep trying until I get this problem solved. Any other suggestions are definitely welcome!