HDD Corrupted?

CharmPeddler

CharmPeddler

New Member
im taking a look at a friends computer for him, when i turned the comp on all i get is a dos curser blinking at the bottum of the screen. thats it. it wont do anything. so i took the HDD out and plugged it in as a external and tried it that way. when i try to open it i get this message.

"F:\ is not accessible.
The File or directory is corrupted and unreadable."

is there anything at all i can do to at least get some files off of the drive? she says she has some poems and documents that are not replaceable.
 
Install the drive internally and boot from a live Linux distro like Knoppix or ubuntu for viewing the partition or boot up with GParted to see if there's actually an active primary on the drive. The boot information was evidently lost somehow.

When setting the second sata used for storage only here as default a flashing dash appears on the upper left corner of the screen when trying to boot from it. There was never any boot loader or ntldr file there to see that. This is why it points at needing an alternate method for viewing and file retrieval.

One old article on Knoppix explains how to use a live for cd Linux distro to access partitions when Windows can't. http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/
 
dont worry. it is easy. i would say like ubuntu is close enough to xp. just have to know to mount ntfs
 
Even though I haven't run any distros on the latest build as of this time I always keep a few live for cd-r type distros onhand just in case of...? The common recommendation for trying out Linux is to first go for a live version where nothing is installed onto a hard drive.

The live for cd versions are a self contained OS in an iso image burned onto a made bootable cd-r. The two links here are for download and tips for how to use the latest version of Knoppix. The most common comment made on the old UNIX based platform is "which flavor for the month do you prefer?". :P

For some general tips with some for how to use a flash drive along with a live for cd release, http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Live_CD_Tips The general download page in English with a few options for other languages is seen at http://www.knoppix.org/
 
thanks alot guys, this looks like a great time to jump right in. i actually have a reason/goal to get this done. im sure that will help in learning.

thanks again.!!
 
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