Here's the situation:
Hard Drive: Western Digital
OS: Win XP NTFS
Is this a mounting problem?? If so.. how do I mount the drive?
Original problem is that the pc wont start on boot. I pulled out the drive and put it into an external enclosure and connected it to my other pc vis USB.
The drive powered up; began spinning; no strange noises etc.
The pc recognizes the connection of a USB device but it does not show on the computer other than the device manager. According to the device manager, the device is working properly and make and model is correct.
Yes, this is where you tell me to reformat but I need the data! Part of my thesis that didnt make it to the backup drive!!!!! I would appreciate any suggestions you have!
Thanks!

How was this "bad" drive formatted? NTFS or FAT32?

This is Formatted NTFS. I fond a program (Virtial Lab) that ran a diagonostic on it saying that the drive isnt mounted but all the data is on there and not corrupt. Problem is that they want $200.00 to extract the data.. there must be a cheaper route!

Download and install a trial version of Acronis True Image Home and see if it can fix the master boot record, and mount this drive

Ok, so I couldnt figure out how to repair the disk so I tried cloning the disc to my working hard drive. When this program recognized the hard drive, it said "unsupported" and calls the hard drive Roxio GoBack.. So now I take it that I must find Roxio Goback software to restore it, which I dont have.

I loaded a version of Roxio Goback in efforts to try to restore the data off of the drive but the program doesnt see the 2nd drive. If I put the drive into my new pc as a "slave," do you guys think that I would have better luck?

Yes, installing the drive as a "slave" is a good idea. If you still can't see the drive, you will have to attempt a format. If it won't format, there's nothing more that can be done

The possible reason for the drive not being seen is that the partition has become corrupt, maybe because of Roxio which has buggered up the boot files. You don't explain at which point the boot process stops, so I will assume it is after the opening screen but before the windows load starts.
Refit to the original machine and reboot from your windows XP CD. From the wizard select the option to repair (press R)
Press 1 to select your operating system assuming there is only one and enter the admin password if you have one.
Now type fixmbr and the enter key.
Reboot without the CD and if you are lucky this will fix it.
If not, here is the last chance.
Reboot to the menu and select item 1) install windows.
At the next menu, select the option to repair the windows installation. This will replace most of the windows files without damaging your data files or the registry. Follow instructions and re-enter the product code when asked.
Best of luck.

Good post AlbertLionheart,
I always forget about the Recovery Console repair feature. I haven't had to use it much

I'll give it a try. Thanks to both of you for your assistance. Wish me luck!

Back to the drawing board

Well, there isnt an operating system on the slave hard drive that is not being recognized. After tearing out an IDE PC expansion card from the motherboard, I connected the hard drive directly to the motherboard and it was recognized! Windows XP repair utlity will not operate on this hard drive though. Fixmbr will not work. Any other suggestions before I end up reformatting the disk? I really don't want to lose all of this information. Any other hard drive recovery utility programs that anyone know of? I dont want to spend $200.00 to get this data back.


Thanks again geeks and peeps!

reformat drive with standard format
then use as slave get any good data recovery software to get your data
file scavenger, O&O recovery and active recovery for ntfs are a few good ones I use
:chef:

Success!

Reformatting and using data scavenger worked great! I got all my data back and still have a working hard drive! Thanks for all of the help guys!
This brings me to one last question: I moved all of the files to my backup hard drive and would now like to erase the hard drive and reformat it to NTFS. Any tips on doing this to make sure that any left over errors will be removed?


Thanks again!!

find utility that writes 0's and or 1's to the whole drive
warning takes some time
HDD regen is a good program that will fix some drive issues to repair bad sectors
this should be done from a bootable GUI or DOS like environment
not from windows
as windows and some virus's mark sectors as bad and they are not

Looks good!

HDD Regenerator
http://abstradrome.com/products/hddreg/151/836527464/hr151.exe

I had some luck restoring "Bad" hard drives by doing an all 0's write, at a success rate of only 10% or less