Win2000 Drive gone bad?

[Winos2Mac]

I have a quantum 30GB 7200 rpm hard drive in a remvable rack tray that i think has gone bod, because it no longer boots into windows 2000. When The "Starting Windows" bar appears, all I can hear is a click noise coming from the hard drive.

I was wondering how i can recover my files on that drive.

I have a 40GB drive that I can reformat and install Windows 2000 on. If I do that, can I then plug in the "bad" windows 2000 drive as a slave drive or something and recover the files off of it.

Actually let me clear things up a bit. I'm not 100% certain that the drive si bad because just 10 minutes ago it Windows 2000 was doing a ChkDisk scan on the drive at bootup.

So If the drive is still good physically, just not booting up for some reason, can I still do what i suggested. I ask this because I know I can do it With windows98. i just haven't had this problem with Windows 2000 or an NTFS drive. Will I have to type in passwords or something?

Well any information you could give me would be great. Im going to try a few things to see If I can get it to bot back up.

Thanks!

[Winos2Mac]

ok nevermind. Im in Windows 2000 now.

But i know that something is wrong because I tried to log in as adinistrator and A message pops up that says that my profile is corrupt. to contact the system administrator.

Can the administrator profile be corrupt and still run?

I dont get it.

How can I get back my administrator profile with all of my settings saved?

im in a temporary administrator profile.
i do have administrative privledges it think.

[JimG]

I would suggest you install Win2k on another drive, then slave the suspect drive to it. When you do the install, make your admin password the same. Then attempt to access the folders and files. It should let you, because the password will be the same. I tried this once and I got it to work. Good luck.

[hifi]

Sorry man...that clicking noise generally only means one thing...your heads are hosed. Try Jim's tip there though, you may be able to salvage some files. Good luck!

[AzKidd69]

yea the clicking normally isn't a good thing... it is commonly called "The click of death" ask IBM deathstar users about it...

and about the files.. if they are not encrypted you should be able to access the files from any other 2k install as long as the profile you are using is a member of the administartor's group. and there is a way to decrypt and recover those encrypted files too takes a bit more work but can be done... ( did you happen to back up your EFS keys??)

if you have ANY files that are on EFS I would first reccomend pulling the EFS keys to floppy then transfer those encrypted files off of that drive then go back and get the non encrypted stuff...

[FreakyOCR]

Winos2Mac.... soudns like you have a bad sector... yes right smack dab in your win2k profile settings....

My dad's IBM had the same thing... clicking and his profile was corrupted as well.... Use Maxtor's utility to check for errors... Yes format that 40GB and install 2k on it. Grab all your files because that utility will likely format your entire drive to attempt to rid the bad sector...

[BFlurie]

Try swapping the power connector on the drive with a known good one.

[Tekk]

I agree that it is a bad sector. The best thing to do is like everyone says...reinstall win2k on the other drive...and slave the one with problems. You'll most likely be able to salvage MOST of your files from the damaged one. Good luck!

[Winos2Mac]

Click of death?

How long do I ave before the drive dies completely.

Because I rebooted and It worked fine (except for the Corrupt profile.)

When it logs me into the temporary Admin profile I see that the Administrator folder under the "documents ann settings" directory is labled "Administrator.bak"

Can I copy that folder and rename it to just "Administrator" and will that allow me to log back in as administrator with my settings?

[FreakyOCR]

No.... because some files are corrupt you can't restore the profile... you *should* be able to salvage most of the files within however (favorites, desktop settings, etc.) But wherever that abd sector is the files are toast. I tried that on a client's and it just came up with the corrupt profile again.. renamed, anything. This bad sector may or may not get worse.. so do get everything off while you still can.

[Winos2Mac]

So can I save all of the important files in the "administrator.bak" directory and then how would i create a new administrator profile?


Because Im in my regular profile at this moment and it seems to be working fine.

I've burned a CD and can log onto the internet and do all the things i used to, so If i just recreate the administrator profile shoudl i be fine?