Corrupt MFT in WinXP, can you help?

[thatdumbguy]

SOLVED: Found a program called GetDataBack for NTFS by Runtime Software, it found everything (all 70000 files) and I'm copying to another drive now. Thanks!

One of my drives has a corrupt MFT.

It happened while installing a 9800 pro, I had just used Driver CLeaner to take off the old drivers (9600XT), turned it off, installed the card, and BAM

This is on my backup drive, where I store all my music, software ISO's, kid's games, etc, so its a pretty heavy hit.

I've tried chkdsk and partition magic, with no luck (chkdsk won't run). I downloaded a program I found called active @file recovery, and I'm running it now to see what files I can pull, but this is literally 10's of thousands of files and over 1000 folders, so I'm not sure what the organization will be like (whether Ill just have that many loose files on my hands)

Some additional info:

The drive is displayed as RAW in explorer, and partition magic won't let me copy the partition (have a 160gb that just arrived today).

I've tried the recovery console using chkdsk, fixboot with no luck.

If I haven't supplied any necessary info, please let me know and I'll get to finding it (I have nothing else to do, as there are about 195m sectors to scan w/ 23 scanned so far.

Thanks for any help or advice you can give me; I figure if there is any way to repair it, someone here will know.

[thatdumbguy]

bump

[Slade]

I just went through the same thing. Twice!

First time around though I was able to use this

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

If your data is intact and the file system corrupt, I think there is a small chance you can recover them to another drive with this program.

If chkdsk ran and turned your stuff to chk files you can use this.

http://www.ericphelps.com/uncheck/

[draksia]

I have had the best luck with

file scanvenger
http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm


It is a sector by sector recovery that preserve the directory structure but it most have a new place to put the files. If you try to recover to the bad disk the results will not be good.

IceCzar also recomends this program. If the data is important then its worth the $40. Run the demo first to make sure it will work.

[thatdumbguy]

Thanks for the input, I will take a look at these programs now. I've since done some research and found Runtime's Disk Explorer for NTFS, it is attempting to recreate the boot sector and MFT in memory to give me full access. We'll see how this goes. Thanks again!

[Nexus6]

Winternals ERD Commander 2003 with Disk Commander got mine back for me automatically. It's pricy though.