Two hard drives set as Master and now they are blank.. HELP PLZ!

[FreeFrag]

Well, I put two Seagate 20Gb hard drives into my KK266 and accidently had them set as master (both of them). Now they are blank, except for a Recycled folder. The one I want recoverd says out of 19Gb 17.1Gb is used, although it only has a Recycled folder. I really need the data off it, any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

 

[rw120555]

I suppose I would (a) see what is in the recycled folder -- if all your files happen to be there, then undelete them; and (b) buy a copy of the Norton Utilities ASAP and see what it can do for you.

I might first wait to see if anybody else has encountered this specific problem before and see if they have less generic advice. Certainly be careful about doing anything that would write to the disk.

Sounds like a weird problem to me. I would think you'd get some sort of bios error at bootup, not two erased disks.

 

[FreeFrag]

rw120555, I havn't looked in recycled yet, I'm too scared! Also, the recycled is just a folder, it isn't the real bin, so i couldn't "undelete them".
I've got Norton Utilities, SystemWorks 2001 in fact. What could it do to help me??

Thanks very much for your help!

 

[rw120555]

First off, I'm not sure how you know the recycled folder isn't really the recycled bin -- it looks like a folder on my machine, so maybe everything will pop up once you open it. Hopefully, you wouldn't be risking disaster just by double-clicking on the folder. (Come to think of it, if the HD's are blank except for the recycled folder, then where is the operating system that is letting you view the folders in the first place? Sounds like you can't be completely blank. Any chance that all your files just got changed to hidden or something like that? Also, you weren't using some sort of compression program on the HD, were you?)

If you have the Systemworks user manual, there is a section on emergency procedures. If for some reason you don't have the manual, it is available, in pdf form, on the installation disk. (I assume you must have a 2nd computer seeing as how you are able to send these messages, so use it to get the Users manual, and, if necessary, install acrobat reader so you can read it)

On P. 113 of my copy of the manual, it says

"To recover a file (Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me only):

1 Put your installation CD into the CD-ROM drive.

2 When the first screen appears, click Launch Utilities From CD.
Caution: Do not click Install Norton SystemWorks. Doing so will
overwrite information on your hard drive.

3 When the Norton SystemWorks CD Utilities screen appears, click
Norton Unerase.

4 When the Norton UnErase Wizard starts, select Find Any Recoverable
Files Matching Your Criteria and click Next.

UnErase Wizard steps you through the process of creating a list of
deleted files from which to choose.

5 When the file you want to recover is located, click the filename to
select it.

6 Click Recover.

7 Click Finish to close UnErase Wizard."

So, I suppose in your case, you would want to recover *.*. Perhaps you'll need to run Norton Disk Doctor too.

Your problem still sounds a little bizarre to me, which is why I wonder if we aren't missing some key factoid. If double-clicking the recycled folder or using Norton conveniently reveals every file and folder you are missing, great, but if not continue to be careful. I can understand your being worried that an unsuccessful repair attempt could do more harm than good. But, I imagine Norton is as good as anything for tackling the problem.

 

[rw120555]

One other thing to try -- if you've got My Computer open, then click View/ Folder Options/ View, and then select the option to "show all files". I can't imagine how your files would all get hidden, but if they are this should show them. (But then again, I don't see how you could only be able to view one folder -- where is the operating system at? The only way I could see this happening, assuming the operating system itself is not badly damaged, is that all files are hidden and hidden files are not being displayed. But, maybe you've left out some piece of info, e.g. you booted from a dos disk and a dir only showed a recycled folder.)

 

[FreeFrag]

I put them into MY computer, that is how I booted. I''ll run RecoverNT later, that might fix it. Thanks for your help rw120555. Does anyone know if FDISK /MBR will fix the FAT?

 

[navylinux]

fdisk /mbr will rewrite a corrupt mbr file. I am pretty sure that you will loose all data on the disk. I have not done it on a disk that had data. So, I may be wrong on that one?

 

[warlord]

fdisk /mbr will not cause the loss of the data on the disks. I don't know positivly if you'll fix the FAT, but I don't beleive it will.

 

[FreeFrag]

/mbr WONT fix a corrupt FAT. I know. Well, I lost all the data, my advice to you is BACKUP! And that 4 month old Backup CD collection probably wont do much if you stuff up now....

Thanks for your help anyway people