Repairing boot sector without deleting files on HD

[oliver]

OK, here goes....

I have two HD's:

1 x 40gig (for all system files and OS) c drive

1 x 250gig (for music, pictures and video) D drive

The whole idea of having the second drive was to preserve valuable files in the case of OS failure.

I was trying out Norton Goback to see if it would prevent problems happening in the future and I now have an unreadable HD (it only sees RAW data), it is the 250gig one.

So far I have tried the following:

1) Using a Partition Table Doctor Demo I can see that the NTFS coding is still there and that it is 250 gigs. It also ststes that there is a boot sector error

2) Using File Scavenger I can see that files are still on the disk. It picks up documents of every kind.

My theory here is that the Norton Ghost has altered the D drives boot sector, making the partition unrecognisable. There was only 1 partition on this disk.

The question is: how do I repair the boot sector so that the entire disk is recognised as one partition?

Partition Table doctor has a fixboot option but I am not sure what it might do.

I will be eternally grateful for any suggestions people have.

System specs

OS XP Pro
512 RAM
Athlon 2.2
40 gig drive
250 gig drive

 

[Samstoned]

How much file space do your files take up
all 250 ?
find IP with free space to save the recovered files
get acronis disk manager recombine partitions another good one partition manager from paragon
this is why I don't have one big drive
use 7 drives on one machine some partitioned some not
also have a encrypted virtual drive nothing gets in it to mess it up

 

[jfaale]

Same problem

I have the exact same problem, but I haven't found a solution :-( Have you been able to recover the boot sector? What was the trick?

 

[iss]

To replace damaged ntldr and ntdetect.com you can copy fresh files from the XP CD using the COPY command. Boot with the XP CD and enter the Recovery Console (as above). At the Command Prompt type the following (where "X" is your CD-Rom drive letter) allowing the files to overwrite the old files
COPY X:\i386\NTLDR C:
COPY X:\i386\NTDETECT.COM C:

To repair a damaged Boot Sector at the command prompt type FIXBOOT and press Enter. Then answer "Y"