"Master File Table Unreadable" - is data recovery possible...?

[joeMan]

I have a friend who owns a restaurant. The main HDD crashed in his business PC. He had all data (menu's, payroll, accounting, etc.) on one HDD, a 30GB Maxtor ATA133 Jun'03. Luckily, he had all his accounting/bookeeping data backed up...but there is still more data on the drive he would like to get back if possible.

I plugged the drive in as 2nd HDD on my PC, and before XP boots it says it needs to run a chkdsk on the volume...so I let it go ahead, but as soon as the chkdsk is supposed to start a message pops up saying "Master File Table Unreadable" - then the PC just boots in as normal after that. There's more...When boot is finished I begin to explore to see what Windows sees of this troubled HDD ~ Windows sees the drive, but says it is unformatted. Disk Mgt. says disk is Active (Healthy). Windows also recognizes it's size of approx. 29GB...I cannot access it though, it just keeps asking if I want to format the drive...

My question(s):

- Is there a utility that will allow me to browse the contents of this drive somehow and selectively salvage whatever is left on it, so I can just get his personal data/files off of it - but not have to grab everything that is on it?

- Can I do it with an XP install disk through recovery console with FIXMBR or something similar?

- Can I somehow access it using an XP boot disk (like you do when you are flashing a BIOS) and get to it from the cmd prompt somehow?

I hope there is a way. We don't want to "save" or re-use the drive. Just want to salvage what is left if possible...

Thank you,

:bow:

jM

[Dave3d]

hey Joeman.
Yes there is a tool to recover lost data. It is:
Active@Undelete

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/activeundelete.html

We use this at work to recover lost data when a drive goes bad (or someone does something stupid), and it has not failed us yet.

You may have to remove the drive, and put it in a good computer as the slave drive, boot with the good drive, and recover info to the good drive. Best thing to do after that is to delete all partitions, build them again, and do a format (drive letter) /u.
Then use the maxtor tool to check the drive and make sure there are no bad sectors on the drive.
Also, on a side note, you may want to switch the drive to a WD or a Seagate. Maxtors seem to be pretty crappy drives for the last few years. We have had about 40 of them go bad within a year (sometimes within weeks) here at my work.
Havent had a WD or Seagate go bad yet.

[joeMan]

TYVM Dave3d. I am DL it now. I will report back to say how it goes...

[Dave3d]

NP.

:thumbs:

[joeMan]

It's working like a charm. Thanks again.

One thing I like better though about gbdnt - GetBackDataNT is that it shows you the original folder names, whereas Active@ Undelete names the folders all with numbers...

Still I thank you very much.

jM

[Dave3d]

Glad to hear it worked for you Joe.
:beer:

I just ran into the same problem ( probably your fault for bringing it up :P j/k).
I lost all my partitions, and like 70gb of data.
Used Active@Partition Recovery, and got back the partitions, but 1 of them was corrupt. I could not recover anything from the corrupt part., but got everything back from the other.
Luckily, the unrecoverable one was my games partition, but I wasnt quite done with Q4 yet !!!!:beat:
Looks like I will have to find someone elses save game.....

[joeMan]

Oh man that sucks. Sorry to hear it. That is the coolest software - to be able to go get stuff you otherwise thought was gone forever...I always thought to do that kind of recovery you had to get in from a DOS prompt or some sort of cmd line.

Another cool (and scary) thing is - I was able to recover a lot of my friends long since deleted files along with the stuff he wanted - some going back as far as 2002!!

How are (were) you liking Quake4 anyway?

[BGP Spook]

Oh man that sucks. Sorry to hear it. That is the coolest software - to be able to go get stuff you otherwise thought was gone forever...I always thought to do that kind of recovery you had to get in from a DOS prompt or some sort of cmd line.

Another cool (and scary) thing is - I was able to recover a lot of my friends long since deleted files along with the stuff he wanted - some going back as far as 2002!!


If you were willing to shell out $$$$$ I know that there is a service that will recover any copy of data from any hardrive regardless. Assuming the drive platters haven't been obliterated. :smash:

I read about it a couple years ago. Don't remember what the name of the company is but I know it exists.
They have recovered data from hardrives that have been at the bottom of a rive for a few weeks and data from hardrives that have gone through :fire: and back.

[Dave3d]

Hey Joe,
Yeah, that software rocks. As long as the data has not been overwritten by another file after it has been deleted, everything is still recoverable. I kinda still remember how to go to a certain sector on the platter, change the first character, and get the file back that way. Mmmmmmmmm.......The old Norton Diskedit days.....Mmmmmmmm.

Q4 was fun until I played F.E.A.R. After that, it did not measure up by a long shot. The MP aspect is just as lacking as Doom3 was also. Overall, not a very fun game. Kinda tedious.

Hey BGP.
Yeah, I know there are still services out there that will do low level retrieval. Those services will cost you BIG $$$$ though. It was just my games partition that got hosed anyway, so no big deal really. What is 20 hours lost in the big scheme of things anyway? :eek:

[wemaole]

hello,

there are many data recovery software can help you

mixiroo.com/datarecovery/

[lieutfunaki]

I'm experiencing the same problem as joeman, but once I've installed active@ undelete, and have clicked on the drive that has failed (in my case E:) it does not give me the option to "recover" nor is it able to complete a scan of the drive. It states that there is an error in the preliminary MFT reading.

By what steps have you all had success in this situation? Is there any value in making a drive image? Any help is appreciated!

:cry:

[joeMan]

Hi lieutfunaki, I replied to your PM...have a look.

[Umzuzmu]

I have same problem as liut... look in PM? Totally new here can anyone help :)

[joeMan]

I have not had that error before, so I am afraid I can't offer any suggestions.

I would start Googling the error and the product name of the recovery software.

[Dave3d]

Free recovery tools, and an article about them here:

http://lifehacker.com/393084/how-to-recover-deleted-files-with-free-software

[Data Recovery]

Too bad. I am sorry to hear that. Anyway, there's a data recovery tool which you can use to back it up. I am also using one and it's helping me a lot.

Data Recovery (http://www.SecureDataRecovery.com)