[The_Neon_Cowboy]

AHH!!! I messed up!!! AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Well anyways I am working on my parents system and since i need acess to this drive on my main rig to back up all thier data . s they refuse to put all they want saved in one place they prefer a "folder" with the previous everything and they can find out what they want. Basically well do it later we are too lazy....

well and thier POS (they won't feaking let me upgrade its about
3-5 year old now) has a DDO.

Well sincve the drive is plugged in on my system I revomed the DDO other
wise it would have to be the boot drive and thats just not happing windows
wouldn't take that. Anyways I remove the ddo...

I restart and bad it doesn't read the disk, windows tries to tell me it's "unformated" partition magic 8 doesn't see but that there and
says that 100% is used....

so partion data is "there" (of couse I didn't dare doing anything in PM8)
Well I try the max blast disk again and it promts and says it detects
windows on the drive would I like to use the windows version insted
so thier utillity can obvouly still read the disk and that windows is on the drive.

It won't let me add a DDO!

It will how ever let me make a bootable floppy with a DDO that suposed
to let you read / boot todrives with a DDO. It load up and says it desctes
no drives that need the DDO drivers.


I will virtaully be tortued and stranged if this data is lost...

Any help would be hot!!!!! I semi sraced becouse If i don't procese correctly
I might loose thier shit. I've done this before but never ran into this...

HELP!

[The_Neon_Cowboy]

I wonder what norton disk doctor would say ran it with fix off
It errors no recognisable file sysem,,,

hmmm...

[PangingJr]

what's DDO? Disk Drive Overlay?

if so, the disk drive may need drive overlay program back. and even that the version of the drive overlay programs might not be compatible with Windows XP so the easiest way to do this will be to attach this drive as secondary drive on a Windows Me/98 system. and see?

in all cases, do not use the fdisk /mbr command from the Windows Me/98 startup disk or the fixmbr command in the Windows XP Recovery Console to remove the drive overlay program in the MBR, because these commands will destroy your drive overlay Master Boot Record information and this may cause data loss.

[The_Neon_Cowboy]

"Dynamic Disk overlay" I thoughtbut it may be Disk Drive Overlay

The ddo is compatable with XP I just think the maxtor program "screwd up"....
I can't add it back, well I could if I formated the drive , but
maxtors tools won't let me.....


I'm currently useing a data recovery I ummm had around
program called getdataback

It seems to be able to see the partition.



I'm recovering the files now: though I won't know weather the data is
comeing off clean, jibbereish or not. I chose basically to restore everthing
and have it copied to a folder on my hard drive... Usealy when I try tools
like this = many corrupt files....

With any "luck" this will work....

What I don't under stand is how this happened in the 1st place the
maxtor program alows you to add of remove a DDO normally and with
out problems. This time It borked the drive....

I know in the future I will have thisdrive partitioned, with all thier must
save data to go on the second partition, as I've done with my and my
girlfriends rig so I can format and not worry when serious problems occur...

It acts like the MBR is "gone" like it removed the DDO MBR and didn't put
the NTFS on back on something like that...


EDIT: The data I have checkd thus far looks good but it seems to be
recovering deleted files etc too...

also no way I can be 100% sure I got everything with out fixing the
drive to a regular redable state but it "looks" like I got everything


EDIT "some" of the data is "junk" / CORRUPT should I contenue to try s
omething else or should i just count my lucky stars for getting what
off what I got and call it a day.....

Or is there something I can do to fix this drive so I can ge the data off.

[The_Neon_Cowboy]

Any sugestions to how to procede?
I was thinking of trying to rebuild the MBR

[PangingJr]

eventhough it's also known as disk drive overlay for many people for so long include me.
but, i think the right term and what DDO is actually short for is Dynamic Drive Overlay.

anyway, that's how the data recovery software usually do. by using it you'll get as much files as you (and the program) could do,
but some of the recovered files may not be important to you.

i don't know how the Maxtor program did when you removed (or stopped using) its drive overlay program,
i'd think it supposed to remove its executable file or code from the drive and also replace the infomation of the drive's MBR. it might have done something wrong in the process.

reason why i said about trying the drive on a Windows 9x system because in some cases of using drive overlay program, the secondary drives that appears to be damaged or have a size of zero bytes in Windows XP can be appeared correctly in Windows 9x.

[Dyre Straits]

Neon,

I'm not sure if my 'remedy' will help. But, twice now I've somehow corrupted my system hard drive on my main computer. I couldn't boot into Windows at all! But, the drive is formatted as NTFS.

So, what I did was install Windows XP temporarily on another HD, boot up with that one, and then install the corrupted drive as a slave. Once it was connected, I ran the Windows Disk Error Check and let it run a full deep scan and repair.

As a result, BOTH times I got my HD recovered and able to get back into Windows as though nothing ever happened.

However, if it does happen again, I think I'm about ready to do a reformat and new installation.

[The_Neon_Cowboy]

I gave up and formated it just have to stick with what ever made it into recoverd data