Rat
Not bored. Never bored.,
So I'm trying to fix a machine for someone. It's an Acer desktop machine running XP Home. It came with two visible partitions (system and data, effectively) plus one invisible one with the system restore stuff on. It was bluescreening on boot everytime, so I did all I could to either boot in safe mode, or run a repair off a Windows CD. Nothing worked. In the end, I tried a fixmbr from the repair console. This made a big difference. Now the 'C:' partition is absolutely hosed.
If I boot from the Windows CD and use the recovery console to look at the available partitions, it sees only the C: and D: partitions. I should mention at this point that there is very (sentimentally) valuable data on the C: partition. If I examine the contents of that partition from the recovery console, it contains just nonsense files and directories. Files with names full of illegal characters, and directories I cannot enter.
Booting from a Knoppix DVD really just reveals the same thing. It sees the partition, and it also reports lots of files with nonsense names. I can't copy them to a USB stick, or over the network, because the names are illegal.
Does anyone know of a tool that will fix the FAT, or whatever it is that's knackered, in order to retrieve the data on it? I don't know for sure what it's formatted with, but as it's XP, there are obviously only two likely options. I've checked with the disk manufacturer's software, and the disk itself seems to be fine; it's just the FAT (or whatever) that's wrongheaded.
I have told the chap in question to expect the worst, but it contains all of the photos his daughter's ever taken over the last 10 years. I have also hammered into him the importance of backups, so there's no need to go over that with me.
Cheers, I hope, in advance.
If I boot from the Windows CD and use the recovery console to look at the available partitions, it sees only the C: and D: partitions. I should mention at this point that there is very (sentimentally) valuable data on the C: partition. If I examine the contents of that partition from the recovery console, it contains just nonsense files and directories. Files with names full of illegal characters, and directories I cannot enter.
Booting from a Knoppix DVD really just reveals the same thing. It sees the partition, and it also reports lots of files with nonsense names. I can't copy them to a USB stick, or over the network, because the names are illegal.
Does anyone know of a tool that will fix the FAT, or whatever it is that's knackered, in order to retrieve the data on it? I don't know for sure what it's formatted with, but as it's XP, there are obviously only two likely options. I've checked with the disk manufacturer's software, and the disk itself seems to be fine; it's just the FAT (or whatever) that's wrongheaded.
I have told the chap in question to expect the worst, but it contains all of the photos his daughter's ever taken over the last 10 years. I have also hammered into him the importance of backups, so there's no need to go over that with me.
Cheers, I hope, in advance.
) and installed it. Plugged in the knackered drive and ran the software, and it recovered almost every file. It worked so well, in fact, that I will now pay for it, not least as the cost is recoverable.