How to Recover Hard Drive Read Errors and Data Loss Problems ?

If your Windows operating system is installed on primary hard drive partition, which is formatted using NTFS file system and you reformat the same partition during setup for clean installation, the partition is automatically formatted as FAT. It copies files from boot disk and then tries to restart your system in GUI mode to proceed with the installation.

However, the installation process fails and your system becomes completely inaccessible. You can not log into your system and gain access of your hdd data. This behavior leads to significant data loss, if there is no backup in place. At this point, you need to go for hard drive recovery to get your valuable data recovered.

In a practical scenario of this problem, the installation process fails and your system stops responding. Furthermore, you come across the below error message:

"DISK READ ERROR OCCURRED."

To fix this behavior, if you boot your system using MS-DOS disk and then run disk repair utility, you come across further error message stating:

"The media descriptor byte is invalid.
FAT copies are not the same.
Many crosslinked files.
All directory entries were invalid."

The partition repair and hdd data recovery process fails. Corruption remains intact and it does not even allow you to resume the installation process.

Cause

Microsoft Windows always formats the primary partition using FAT file system, and then it converts to NTFS. When you select to format system or boot partition using NTFS file system, Setup inadvertently writes 16 sector NTFS boot area on newly formatted FAT file system partition after file copy process completes. The problem may also occur if the partition is either damaged or corrupted.

Resolution

To sort out this behavior and recover hard drive data, go through any of the below steps:

During Setup process, remove primary NTFS partition and then re-create partition to format it as NTFS.

Install Windows operating system on FAT file system and then convert the FAT file system to NTFS.

If the above methods doesn't work, format the drive and reinstall operating system. However, this process removes all your valuable data from the HDD and requires hard drive recovery software to retrieve data. The applications are capable of easily, quickly, and safely recovering your valuable data in all data loss situations.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery software recovers lost data from all types of hd drives, including IDE, EIDE, SATA, SCSI, and eSATA. The software is designed for Microsoft Windows 7, Vista, 2003, XP, and 2000. It salvages lost Windows data from NTFS5, NTFS, FAT32, VFAT, FAT16, and FAT12 file system partitions.

Author: Robin Watson a student of Mass Communication doing research on windows data recovery software.

Resource: http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Fix-Hard-Drive-Read-Errors-and-Data-Loss-Problems&id=4357497

Surmounting System File Corruption in Windows

System files act as a backbone of any Windows operating system. These files consist of all I/O (Input/Output) information about Windows, which is used to access the system's software and hardware. Corruption in any of the system files can result in serious damages, even resulting in complete unbootability of the system.

Few most common reasons for system file corruption can be improper system shutdown, downloading an incompatible patch, registry damage, virus attack, and operating system damage.

To overcome a system file corruption scenario, a Windows user can run SFC (System File Checker) utility. This utility scans for damaged system files and repairs them to maximum possible level. However, there is no surety that the tool can perform repair in all cases. In such cases, the user needs to perform a fresh reinstall of Windows operating system and then restore the data from a valid backup. But, in the absence of a complete and valid backup, the user needs to opt for a commercial Hard Drive Recovery application.

For deep analysis of the above case, consider a real-time scenario where you encounter the below error message while starting your Windows XP system. The same error message appears every time you try to boot your system:

“Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:

\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM”

After the above error message pops up, the data saved in your Windows XP based hard drive becomes inaccessible.

Cause:

The above error message appears due to corruption in Windows XP system file.

Resolution:

To resolve the above error message and to access the data saved in Windows XP based hard drive partition, you will need to follow the below measures:

1.Run 'SFC/ scannow' command to resolve corruption.

2.In case the command fails, reinstall Windows XP and restore data from an adequate backup.

However, in case no data backup is available, you can recover formatted hard drive data by using a powerful third-party Hard Drive Recovery application. Such Hard Drive Data Recovery tools employ advanced recovery procedures that can recover all files and folders from a formatted hard drive. Such tools are compatible with all kinds of hard drives, regardless of their size and brand.

Read More

Seagate Hard Drive : 3TB Drive En Route, but some Issues

Not that it should come as a huge surprise that a major hard drive manufacturer is working on ever-larger storage capacities, but a Seagate senior product manager has confirmed to Thinq that the company is planning to unveil a 3TB hard disk later this year.

Barbara Craig, the product manager, said that the move to 3TB involves a heck of a lot more work than just upping the areal density this time around. "The root of the problem is the original LBA (logical block addressing) standard, which can't assign addresses to capacities in excess of 2.1TB," the report said-a problem that's been lying in wait since Microsoft and IBM developed the original DOS standard in 1980.

The potential ramifications of this so far appear to be what OSes will be compatible with 3TB drives.

Craig said that Seagate plans to extend the standard to Long LBA addressing, which would work in 64-bit Windows 7 and Vista as well as Linux, but wouldn't work in 32-bit Vista or any version of Windows XP, the report said. In fact, it's possible that XP may not even see the first 2.1TB portion of a larger drive, either. This brings back memories, doesn't it?

Another issue surrounds the GUID partition table (GPT) for the master boot record. Because current MBR partitions are limited in size to 2.1TB, a system would need the new table to see beyond that amount of storage. An updated GPT is part of Intel's proposed Extensible Firmware Interface specification, which would replace the traditional BIOS and is supported by the United EFI Forum (UEFI), but most motherboards don't currently feature the Interface.

Craig estimates, however, that 80 percent of the infrastructure is ready to support the UEFI standard.

A version of this article originally appeared on Gearlog.

Hard Drive Recovery

“Hard disk drive failure” Error in Windows XP?

Hard disk drive is most critical component of your computer system, which works as main data storage for your system. It contains all your significant data, operating system and applications. Hard drive is considered as the most reliable storage media, but it may also fail at some point.

When your drive fails in Microsoft Windows computer, you may come across disk failure errors and all your data become inaccessible. In such cases, hard drive recovery is required to extract your lost data from failed Windows hard drive.

In a practical scenario, you might encounter following error message when you attempt to start your Microsoft Windows XP-based computer:

“Hard disk drive failure”

When you try to boot the same system from Microsoft Windows 98 boot disk, and then attempt to use Fdisk.exe utility for accessing the disk partition information, you may get another error message that is similar to the following one:

“No fixed disk present”

This behavior of Microsoft Windows XP renders all of your valuable data inaccessible and cause data loss circumstances. In order to get your data back in these situations, find out the cause of this problem and perform Hard Drive Data Recovery by sorting it out.

Root of the problem

You may experience this problem with your Windows XP computer if any of the below given conditions are true:

• Your Windows hard disk drive isn't installed properly.

• The hard disk drive isn't configured properly in the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) of your Windows computer.

• The hard drive is either missing or damaged.

• File system corruption or raw hard drive.

These issues make your hard drive inaccessible for the operating system and thus system does not boot up.

Resolution

In order to fix this problem, contact your computer vendor for assistance. If the hard drive is having logical problem, format the drive and reinstall operating system. This behavior fixes most of the hard drive related errors, but also remove all the data from hard drive and cause serious data loss problems.

Resource: http://hubpages.com/hub/Hard-disk-drive-failure-Error-in-Windows-XP

In such situations, hard drive recovery software come for your rescue. They use high-end scanning techniques to perform extensive scan of the hard drive and extract all of the lost data from it. The Hard Drive Data Recovery applications are quite easy and safe to use.

ets discuss the Methods of Disk Striping in Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows NT-based operating systems create a hard drive file system, known as stripe set. It is created by dividing the data into blocks and then spreading them in fixed order through all hard drive in RAID array. By adding information and data to all the partitions in set at same rate, disk striping provides best performance of all the Windows disk management strategies. Disk striping helps you to recover your data if any of the disk fails in array. But if more than one drives fail, data become unrecoverable and you need to opt for hard drive recovery solutions to get your mission-critical and valuable data back.

Server versions of Microsoft Windows operating system (including Windows Server 2000 and Windows Server 2003) enable you to set fault tolerance hard drive striping with parity that stores both stripped data and parity information on different disks of RAID array for redundancy. The disk striping can be done either with parity of without parity:

Striping with parity

You can create the stripe set with parity on minimum 3 and maximum 32 drives. A single stripe on stripe set with the parity could be located on every physical disk. Total amount of hard drive space used for storing the parity information is equal to size of a partition in set. Nevertheless of the number disks used in stripe set with the parity, data is retrievable only if a single disk is lost. Such cases need Hard Drive Recovery to be handled.

The FTDISK.SYS (Fault Tolerance Driver) makes loss of a disk partition in stripe set with the parity invisible, you could write and read data from a set with lost information as when it was healthy. But stripe set does not remain fault tolerant. Loss of any of the remaining hard drive partitions would cause data to be unrecoverable in stripe set.

Striping without parity

This process does not provide fault tolerance; if any of disk in stripe is damaged or bad, whole disk stripe would be lost. The stripe set could be created on minimum 2 and maximum 32 disks. A single stripe on stripe set could be located on every physical disk. It provides excellent performance of all the Microsoft Windows disk management strategies.

In such situations, data loss require Hard Drive Data Recovery to be sorted out. The recovery is best possible using advanced and powerful third-party applications, known as hard drive recovery software. They work in most of the data loss situations and retrieve all types of lost files, documents and other data.

Lets Resolve “Unmountable Boot Volume” Error in Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows hard drive contains two types of partitions- system/boot partition and data partition. The boot partition contains operating system, master boot code, and MBR (Master Boot Record), which are used to boot your system. When your system boots up, MBR is the first program that is loaded into main memory, followed by boot loader and operating system.

However, in some situations, the boot volume of your Microsoft Windows system can not mount and the system becomes totally unusable. This behavior renders all your valuable data on the Windows hard drive inaccessible and cause severe data loss. In order to retrieve lost data from hard drive, Hard Drive Recovery applications are required.

In a practical scenario, you may come across the below error message when you try to boot your Microsoft Windows XP computer:

“STOP 0x000000ED (0xaaaaaaaa,0xbbbbbbbb,0xcccccccc,0xdddddddd) UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME”

In the above error message, aaaaaaaa, bbbbbbbb, cccccccc, and dddddddd are the hexadecimal numbers, which may vary as per your system configuration.

Grounds of the problem

You may come across this problem when your file system gets damaged and the boot volume can not be mounted. Most commonly, this problem is due to corruption to the Boot.ini file. Boot.ini is the main boot file of Windows XP operating system, which contains all critical boot configuration settings.

Solution

In order to work around this problem and perform Hard Drive Data Recovery, check the integrity and consistency of your Windows hard drive. You can check your hard drive for errors using inbuilt utility of Microsoft Windows operating system, known as ChkDsk. You can repair a damaged hard drive using the below steps:

Enter Microsoft Windows Recovery Console using Windows boot disk.

Type chkdsk /r at command prompt and press enter key.

When repair process completes successfully, type exit.

Reboot your system.

If the above method does not work, you need to format your Windows hard drive and reinstall Windows operating system. It replaces all the damaged files and gets your system back to working state. However, it also removes data from hard drive and creates need of Hard Drive Recovery Software. They are totally safe and easy to use. Such tools use high-end scanning techniques to methodically scan the hard drive and extract inaccessible data from it. The applications Recover Hard Drive in all cases of data loss.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery software recovers lost data from hard drives, USB drives, memory cards, and other storage media. The software works well with Microsoft Windows 7, Vista, 2003, XP, and 2000. It salvages data from NTFS5, NTFS, FAT32, VFAT, FAT16, and FAT12 file system partitions.

Recovering hard drive when NTLDR is missing or corrupt

A boot loader is a special program in a computer system that is used to load the operating system when the computer is switched on. In the Windows system, the NTLDR (NT Loader) is the boot loader that is usually executed from the primary hard disk drive. A Windows system requires minimum 2 files to boot a system, NTLDR and boot.ini.

But strictly speaking, only NTLDR is needed to boot the system as the absence of boot.ini can be sometimes covered by alternate methods. However, sometimes the NTLDR file gets corrupt or missing because of several reasons such as virus infections, human errors, power outages, corrupt boot sector, etc. In such cases, you should look to use appropriate corrective measures to resolve the issue. However, if you are unable to do so then you should consider using a third-party Windows hard drive recovery software to recover hard drive.

Consider a scenario wherein you switch on your NTFS-based Windows XP system but it fails to boot. An error message is displayed, that is:

“NTLDR is missing

Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart.”

Boot: Couldn't find NTLDR

Please insert another disk

NTLDR is missing

Press Ctrl Alt Del to Restart

Cause:

The root cause for the aforementioned error messages is that the NTLDR file is either corrupt or missing.

Resolution:

To address the issue, you need to perform the following steps:

1.Insert the Windows XP boot CD into the computer system.

2.Press any key, when prompted.

3.On the Windows XP setup menu, press the "R" key to repair Windows.

4.Press the “1” key and “Enter” to start the Windows installation.

5.Enter the administrator password, when prompted.

6.Copy the following files to the root directory of the primary hard disk as shown in the following command:

copy e:\i386\ntldr c:\


copy e:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\

7.Remove the CD from the computer and reboot. This should resolve the issue.

However, if you still are not able to perform hard drive recovery then you should use a third-party hard drive recovery software to address the issue. Such read-only tools are able to recover the lost data from corrupted hard drives using fast yet sophisticated scanning algorithms.