I have a Maxtor HDD which has recently given me "disk read error" whenever i boot up. It then tells me to press ctrl+alt+del but repeats the cycle. Recently i plugged in an old quantum HDD (running on win98) which had some problems as a slave with my Maxtor as the master. I got into WinXP and used the Admin tools to reformat the old quantum HDD. Now the quantum HDD is running but my Maxtor isnt! Before formating the Quantum i had some issues figuring out which jumpers settings were master, slave and cs so i turned the power off quite a few times w/out shutting down properly. i only did this when the Quantum was in master setting tho.
I tried setting up the Maxtor as a slave on another computer but i still get "disk read error".
Whats happened to my Maxtor HD? Is it a windows version problem cos of the 2 HDs having diffrent OS's? Is there a way to get all my data back from the Maxtor like a recovery program. I heard of one called GetDataBack but im not too confident it will help.
Does anybody have any suggestions for recovery programs or has anybody had this problem before?
Thanks

Try chksdk c: in the recovery console (assuming that you use Windows XP an it's installed on the c: partition).




Michael

A frend of mine ran a dos program (probly chksdk i dont know) and fixed some indexes but still dusnt boot.
All the files were still there so we managed to save what we needed. Now we just finished a reformat and everythings working again
Thanks for the tip

This is the same problem I'm having, only I don't want to reformat my hard drive. I can read the drive as a slave drive without any problems but it will not boot from that drive. The drive used to work fine as the master until I got the blue screen of death during a download from the Internet. Every since that it will not boot. It is very, very frustrating. NO ONE seem to know how to fix this problem, at least up til now. I have seen similar messages on many sites but no clear answer/solution to it. I would appreciate any help someone can give me...

Hi Drewfort

Ok make sure that the drive withe the boot problem is the master. for this excersise remove your good drive or just uplug the power to it.

Insert your XP disk and boot from the disk
Select recovery console
follow the promts until you are in DOS
C:\windows
at the above prompts type FIXMBR

Why?
This will fix the Mater Boot Record for Windows it will ask you if you are sure and follow the prompts

once complete type CHKDSK /r
that is CHKDSK space /r
this will check the disk and repair any bad sectors

once complete type exit

system will reboot

Hope this helps


Darren
South Africa

Thanks for the info, but my problem is deeper than that. Whenever I try to boot using the CD with the drive as the master (regardless if there's a slave drive in or not), I first get the message at the top of the screen saying it's going through the configuration (as it should) and then nothing. The screen is completely black and the keyboard is locked/dead. The only choice you have at that point is to reboot.
If I go through the same procedure (boot from the CD) with another hard drive as the master it boot from the CD with no problem. There is something occurring between the bios check and when Windows is started that's causing this problem.

GetDataBack is a brilliant program

Download it, try it (works as long as the drive is recognised in BIOS), have duff drive jumpered as slave, run GDBFor NFTS

It willprove whether or not it can get your data back-THEN you can pay by credit card!!!


Try all other options first, but even after formatting a disk, GDB works brilliantly!!!

Steve S

I'd say that something zxnrbled the boot sector on your master drive.

You need to change a BIOS setting:

Boot CD, then C drive.

Put the Windows install CD in and boot. It will then reinstall Windows and fix that.

Warning: If it can't fix the boot sector, it may reformat the entire hard disk.

I'm having this same problem now with my fileserver... tried recovery console chkdsk /r /p but no love

I'm afraid to try the FIXMBR thing cause won't that destroy my current data?

Are there any good, free programs I can use to syphon the data off the hard drive and onto, say, a USB drive or something?

fixmbr is very dangerous-and will lose data-UNLESS you are absolutely certain the hd was formatted/partitioned originally by Windows.
If Maxblast , the WD formatter by Daniel Nagy or similar was used originally, fixmbr will render your drive invisible to BIOS

OTHERWISE, fixmbr can be used as a very last resort.
Try Paragon Rescue Kit (freebie) first

Getdataback will usually recover data from a reformatted drive-if recognised in BIOS