Hello,

What would be the correct way to repair an issue where the first sixty-two sectors are missing or corrupt?

I would try to post the contents of what is there, but I do not think the board software would be pleased if I did so.

So... Sector one is completely zero except for 1B0:

00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 1F 05 20 05 00 00 00 00

Then, all sectors are empty until 63, where I can see the NTFS marker and NTLDR and also various files past the 64..65 sector.

Obviously, the disk is showing up in the Disk Manager as "Not Initialized."

Any suggestions?

initialize and rebuild partition table manually in hexeditor.
U might find TestDisk helpful....

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

Okay, TestDisk looks promising.

I can see all of the partitions using this tool. However, if I allow XP to initialize the disk, will this be a destructive operation on the filesystem?

Please forgive my newbish questions. I have Googled, but did not find any concrete opinions regarding this procedure.

TIA

XP initialisation will only init the MBR. Do not create any partitions through XP, that will do more damage.

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

Thank you pepe.

I believe that I may have lost some data during this process. I say so because I believe that there were files in sectors 64,65 and now it appears to be filled with mft data.

But, considering that this disk was ~40% full, I will call this a major success.

Thanks for all of your help!

On a typical windows boot drive 1-62 are empty, 63 is going to be the NTFS boot sector, and 64+ is going to be BOOTMGR / NTLDR

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Well, that's the interesting part.

This drive was not supposed to ever boot. Until a week ago it was a data drive in my 2003 Server. After getting some kind of virus on my LAN, I began to pull all of the drives to one machine that was segregated from the network and merge/backup.

Got up this morning and found that this drive (in a temporary USB enclosure) had gone away and didn't want to cough up the goods. Guess it's time to flatten this machine too.

But, I will put that bit of data in my file of useful knowledge.

"How do you get to Carnegie Hall? ...Practice"