Disk I/O error... C drive inaccessible

[winterlude]

While running a defrag on a WinME system, it crashed. When I tried to reboot, the only message was ?Disk I/O error, replace the disk, and then press any key?.
I?ve used a boot disk and can see the C: drive, but any time I try to access it or read the directory, I get ?abort/retry/fail?
Can?t defrag, scan, or checkdisk either. Same abort/retry/fail message.
I tried Hard Drive Mechanic software. The diagnosis was that there?s something wrong with the FAT, and the software couldn?t recover (blank FAT instead of a bunch of hardware codes).

I?ve looked around the net and found a few posts of people who had the same problem: ran a defrag on WinME and the FAT tanked. But none of those threads resulted in resolving the problem. All they did was Fdisk and start from scratch.


Any ideas for how I can restore this computer?s OS and files short of taking it to a data recovery service?

Thanks in advance

 

[montag451]

Could try a chkdsk, but there is no guarantee.

 

[Wolfshanze]

Is this an "only computer"? Do you have access to another computer (either in your house or perhaps a friend's house?).

If you can, try removing the hard drive and setting it up as a "slave" drive in your second (or friend's) computer... you should be able to read the drive so long as it isn't totally jacked... you can then transfer files/data to a safe source (another drive or optical disc).

Most I/O errors in Win9X systems usually mean the boot sector is messed up in some way, but you can usually still recover all the data simply by using it as a slave drive in a working system. If it's unreadable in this fashion, you are probably screwed... at least with any simple answers to your problem.

Good luck.