harddrive partition problem

[bhess]

I have a harddrive that has 3 NTFS partitions. I can't access one partition that has a lot of important

files on it. The other two partitions work fine.

I've tried fdisk/mbr, Maxtors powermax, and norton disk doctor.

If I go to computer management- disk management, it shows as healthy but it doesn't have NTFS like the

other partitions.

The only other options I can think of is using partition magic to merge it with another partition, and

it gives me the option to delete logical drive. I think the second option will erase all my files.

Any ideas out there?

Merging adjacent partitions using PM should not corrupt the partition. But it is not 100% safe either. I'd not do anything drastic immediately.

I think there's a utility that can see NTFS from a dos boot disk.

Lemme get back on this.

[PresterJohn]

does that version of norton support ntfs partitions?

i don't think a dos (freeware) ntfs utility will do very much since most only offer read access only and it sounds as if either the file or partition table is corrupted.

did you try running chkdsk /f from the command prompt? also how are is the problem partition set up (primary, logical)?

[bhess]

I have 3 drives in the computer. I unplugged all but the problem drive. It doesn't have an OS on it so I booted with a win98 floppy. Then typed fdisk/mbr.

NDD did support NTFS and it gave an error about the partition being corrupt. And then it would search to find but not finish.

It's the second of 3 partitions and it's the extended part.

[PresterJohn]

well, the drive does not have a boot record so fdisk/mbr isn't likely to fix your problem.

and the norton utility you ran didn't have an option to repair it? you will probably need a much stronger recover utility.

you can try to attempt to use the partition magic program to copy the damaged partition...perhaps you might have some luck that way. you need to connect another drive to the machine of course.

[PresterJohn]

also try d/l'ing PC inspector & Disk Investigator found here:

http://www.webattack.com/freeware/sy...recovery.shtml

[bhess]

I tried both of those and neither detected the partition.

[nonobaddog]

I recently had a drive go bad so that XP would not boot. I put the drive in a different machine and XP could not read or even see it for that matter. However I was able to boot to a Linux CD and recover much of my data. The only files I could not get were the ones mangled by chkdsk. They may have been trash already, who knows?
I went into the BIOS, made my CD drive the first boot device and booted to Knoppix from http://www.knoppix.org I was able to read my files from the bad drive and write them to a spare drive formatted in FAT32.
Of course this will not work for some physical drive problems but it sure worked great for me.

[Underclocked]

You might try BartPE. Should be able to see it from Bart.