Old drive crashed & now a slave. Can not open Owner folder?

[afinepoint]

The old Seagate drive became unstable and finally crashed. UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME was its dying gasp. That drive was diagnosed as "bad" and was replace with a Western Digital. I did not copy recent needed data such as documents, pictures and such before the crash. Classic mistake I know.

I hooked up the bad drive as a slave, started up the computer and quickly came to the CHKDSK blue screen. It found and deleted three corrupt file records then inserted security descriptors into three areas. It went too fast for me to write them down but it appears they were inserted in to the once corrupted areas.

The computer finished starting up without further incident. The old drive was seen and labeled "G". I saw familiar programs and was able to transfer some folders however:

All microsoft documents whether word or excel are gone. I can't even find the Microsoft Word progam. Further I can not open Owner. It says access is denied . . . When I click on properties is says 0 bytes. One or two other programs are missing. Could they have been in the corrupted area?

Can I do a restore of this drive alone? Or only the master drive can be restored. Is Windows just blocking access to certain areas of the drive?

I can piece together much of the data from old CD backups and SD cards. I am seeking knowledge as well as data.

Thanks,

Reg

[Kashif]

Use data recovery like GetDataBack

[jbennet]

If you chose "make my folders private" when you made the Owner user account then you cannot open it from windows.

[afinepoint]

To my knowledge it was never made private. Windows created the folder and I have never renamed or messed with it. The same folder appears on the original drive, can be opened and contains the familiar files; (my) documents, (my) pictures etc but that drive went bad last October. The original is currently installed as a slave.

I am wondering if when the second drive crashed the heads touched the surfaces.

I have been referred to a site called drivesavers.com who supposedly can recover data. Ever hear of them?

Nothing of great significance has been lost. It will just be time consuming to recreate a few word documents, palm data and such.

[jbennet]

If it was nothing of significance dont botherr with drivesavers. Data recovery is really expensive.

[afinepoint]

Why does the Owner folder show 0 bytes when the properties is clicked on? Is it really empty?

Is the information there and Windows won't allow access for safety reasons?

When doing a search for known word documents once on that drive via file name nothing was found. Is there any means around this to look at the drive without Windows help. A software version of Sherlock Holmes?

Lots of questions I know but this is also a leaning and understanding process for me.

afp

[gerbil]

Goggle for Rest2514. Another is PCI Filerecovery. Both free, both fast, both simple, both good.

[gerbil]

Restore will only return registry settings to what they were at that time. It will not undelete files. Your new installation on the new drive would not even see the old restore information on the Seagate -it would not know about its existence. But that is not your problem here.
What happens [if you can remember some paths...?] if you go Start, run, and enter:
G:\ the path to those files... eg G:\documents and settings\owner\My Documents... or whatever the path was
And the same for the Excel files? You may be able to get hints for paths from your new installation.
Windows deals with shell folders such as My Documents differently to the way it handles other files. Your data is most likely still there, you just need to get around windows.... those shell folders were established so that each user could easily gain access to his pictures, his documents etc without being exposed unnecessarily to those of other users unless he really wanted to, and had any permission required. I don't use Excel, but it could be for the same reason that you cannot see those files..ie another shell folder setup. Further, if you were using XP Pro you would need to take ownership of those files anyway, and M$ guide works for that: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308421

[afinepoint]

Gerbil,

Thank you for all of the information. I will look for the software mentioned.

The service center installed the new drive and ran the 6 CD recovery on it. A restore was never attempted on the crashed drive. It just died with the Windows error message: UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME. The service center diagnosed the drive as bad and removed it. As mentioned when it was reinstalled as the slave drive and Windows started three sectors were deleted by chkdsk and security scriptors (whatever they are) installed.

I have transferred what I could from the original (1st) drive that died last October. All of my documents, pictures, date book entries and such stop at that time. I am currently rebuilding data via notes, my own memory and such. That drive is in the machine as a slave for now and is performing well, though runner noticeably hotter that the master.

Wednesday I will swap slaves again and work with the software you mentioned in trying to retrieve data from the drive in question.

Is that software straightforward? Again why does the Owner folder show 0 bytes if the data is there?

afp

[jbennet]

because its hidden. If you dont have read permissions on it then its 0

[afinepoint]

Interesting.

I also asked for an advanced search for known documents on that drive with the search to include hidden files.

Why weren't any found?

afp

[jbennet]

Because you do not have read permissions on them

[afinepoint]

Data recovered and files and folders tranferred. I didn't need any additional software. I had to "convince" Windows I had rights to the required areas. With a potentially unstable drive it was easier to do that and then let Windows do the rest as designed.

Thank to all for the bread crumbs. Glad they didn't get eaten before I found my way out.

afinepoint