Disk Recovery Software...

[hotponyshoes]

Hi all,
I had a pc with a single 250gb hard drive, this drive had win xp installed along with all my music that I had ripped to mp3 directly from the original cd's.
I then stipeed this pc down to make my htpc using the mb/processor/etc.
I left the hard drive alone as I went with 2 drives on the htpc.

I have just built another desktop pc and fitted a new 60gb drive into it which I installed a clean copy of xp on.
(all drives are sata)
Once xp and sp2 were installed I plugged the original 250gb drive back in but windows gave the 'found new hardware' noise but it would not showin 'my computer'.
The 250gb was originally labed as 'C' so I had set the new 60gb drive as 'F' when I did the clean install.

I attemped to restart the pc but it would not boot with the new drive attached.

Like a tw*t I booted using a partation tool cd (after a look on google) and deleted the MBR on the 250gb drive.
I did not change anything else (so it's not reformatted)
The system now boots fine and detects the drive but it shows it as unformatted.

I have a copy of O&O DiskRecovery which can detect all the original files and will restore them ok.
The problem is: All the folder structures are missing and all the file names have gone.

I originally had the mp3's in Artist/Album folders with the file name being the track title.

Does anybody know of any way/software to help me on this?
I don't want to 'restore' the whole drive as I will be in the same situation as before (no boot)
From what I can work out the MBR is the record of the files and there folder structures along with file names,
Obviously I should not have wiped this off! But, is there any way of restoring it but allowing the drive to be picked up?
I don't know a lot about sata drives but as there is no master/slave jumpers on them is it the mbr that sets this up hence it would not work when I tried to add a second 'master' drive?

Cheers!!


TV-Server Version:
MediaPortal Version: 2.3RC3
MediaPortal Skin: X-Face
Windows Version: XP Pro Sp2
CPU Type: AMD 4600+ Dual Core 2.4GHZ
HDD: 250GB Sata 300 / 500GB Sata 300
Memory: 2GB (2x1GB) PC4000 3200 CL2 Corsair TwinX
Motherboard: Abit AN8 32x
Video Card: 2 x BFG 7600GT OC 512mb SLI
Video Card Driver: Nvidia
Sound Card: Abit Optical Out
Sound Card AC3:
Sound Card Driver:
1. TV Card: Black Gold GDI3520 Dual-Tuner
1. TV Card Type: DVB-T / Analog
1. TV Card Driver:
2. TV Card: Black Gold GDI3520 Dual-Tuner (Quad Configeration)
2. TV Card Type: DVB-T / Analog
2. TV Card Driver:
3. TV Card:
3. TV Card Type:
3. TV Card Driver:
4. TV Card:
4. TV Card Type:
4. TV Card Driver:
MPEG2 Video Codec:
MPEG2 Audio Codec:
h.264 Video Codec:
Satelite/CableTV Provider:
HTPC Case: Thermaltake Bach
Cooling: Fans
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower
Remote: iMon
TV: Panasonic TH37PW5B 37" Plasma Display
TV - HTPC Connection: VGA / Component

[keith2045]

I'm confused, why are you installing XP on 2 different drives on the same system? And you are getting found new hardware noise? You are doing this with the computer turned off, correct?

What i would do is unplug all drives, except for the 250gb, then boot of the CD then run fixmbr (Computer stops responding with a black screen when you start Windows XP). The MBR is a place on the hard drive that the bois goes to find the bootstrap loader for the OS.

[hotponyshoes]

The 250gb drive came from the last pc and had xp installed along with my files.

I rebuilt the pc wanting to use a smaller drive as the system drive and use the 250gb to store music.

I never wiped the 250gb drive as with the older IDE drives I could just install a new copy of the os and boot using that drive, set the second drive to slave and access all the data normally.

I do not want to boot from the 250gb drive as I am now using/booting from the 60gb, I did have both drives with a MBR and set the bios to boot from the 60gb but it would hang befire loading windows.

[Tomy]

you could also try Ontrack EasyRecovery
it does the best recovery in my experience in ability to find filenames, directories (nothing else i found does it better...

[rtv]

PC Inspector File Recovery

[Marcusb]

Originally Posted by Tomy

you could also try Ontrack EasyRecovery
it does the best recovery in my experience in ability to find filenames, directories (nothing else i found does it better...

That's what I use too. It's great at recovering from all sorts of data problems. Things like failed or broken partitions, deletions, formatting, you name it.
It also has utilities to recover corrupt Office Documents (.doc, .xls, .pst, .mda....) and also corrupt zip files.

I have a pretty old version, but it still works great.