Unmountable boot volume? Any info or help please?

[guitarguy316]

took out the hard drive and put it back in after i sent my laptop to ibm. now when i start up the computer i get the unmountable boot volume. i ran some pc-doctor tests and it said that there are some bad sectors. what should i do next? also, is there any way to get anything off the drive? i really just want to recover the "my documents" folder. any help would be great, thanks

[Kyocera]

If it were me i'd pull out my Partition Commander CD boot from it and try to fix the boot sector.

[guitarguy316]

how do i do that? im not familiar with that...

[Kyocera]

http://www.v-com.com/product/Partition_ ... _Home.html

This has bailed me out a lot, there may be some freeware somewhere to allow you to accomplish this.

[Orevin]

If you have a Windows CD, follow these steps: http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;555302

[Kyocera]

That reminds me if you have a floppy drive available, you can create a boot disk, by copying some files to it from a good system, either 2000 or XP will work.


Create a Boot Floppy Disk with a Windows XP-Based Computer1. Format a floppy disk by using the Windows XP format utility. For example, with the floppy disk in the floppy disk drive, type format a: at a command prompt, and then press ENTER.
2. Copy the Ntldr and the Ntdetect.com files from the I386 folder on the Windows XP Setup CD-ROM, Windows XP Setup floppy disk, or from a computer that is running the same version of Windows XP as the computer that you want to access with the boot floppy.
3. Create a Boot.ini file (or copy one from a computer that is running Windows XP), and then modify it to match the computer that you are trying to access. The following example works for a single-partition IDE drive with Windows XP installed in the \Windows folder, but the exact value in the [operating systems] section depends on the configuration of the Windows XP computer that you are trying to access:

[EOMtp]

You will need to determine if the drive is defective or if the boot sector(s) are failing to act properly. If the latter, then you can recover all your data; if the former, then you may or may not be able to recover data.

One needs the ability to boot to some diagnostic software and then test the drive. Do NOT connect the drive to a non-Thinkpad PC, as the geometry of disk access in Thinkpads differs from the "normal".

You need to find a bootable CD (or floppy + floppy dirve) which will take you to an MS-DOS Prompt (a la Windows 98). Alternately, you need a boot disk to boot to a utility like SpinRite, Partition Magic, or some version of DOS so you can type "C:[Enter]" followed by "DIR" and determine if the C: drive is "seen" and if the files on it are accessible.

You can also use the Windows XP Recovery Console.

HOWEVER, everything I noted above is not something you will do easily the first time. Find a friend who says "Oh, yes, no problem!" to what is written here and you will be on your way. If your friend says "What does he mean?" about anything above, find another friend!

I don't mean to be flippant, but you have a very easy task which, paradoxically, requires a lot of knowledge to carry out.
Good luck!

[w0qj]

I did this for my friend a while ago (if you're rich):

If you have an extra notebook HDD lying around (or buy a new one), and you have burnt your Product Recovery CD's (all 7 of them for my T42):

You can also put your problem HDD (with your data) into an external USB enclosure.

Insert your brand new HDD (with no data) into your Thinkpad.

Boot from your Product Recovery CD's and let it format/install your new HDD.

Install your HDD repair utilities or file recovery utilities on your *new* HDD in your Thinkpad.

Then run these utilities from your Thinkpad on your old problem HDD with data (which is in an external USB HDD).


Note: generally you only get one good chance to recover your data--so decide very carefully whether you want to try to repair your HDD, or just try to salvage what data you can recover.

Data recovery is very depending on how fragmanted your files are.
(Another reason to defragment your HDD regularly).

Basically, intact files that are not fragmented files should be recoverable.
Fragmented files are very very difficult to recover, and very few programs even let you manually do this and is generally reserved for rescuing image files. You basically need to manually/visually match truncated image file with all the (many many) other loose file fragments floating around on your HDD--not worth in 99% of cases I would imagine, unless it's your only copy of your marriage photos...

[carbon_unit]

If you just want some files from the disk go download Knoppix or [censored] Small Linux or Slax or some other live cd and you can recover any files from your hard drive and put them on about any storage device you have or shoot it across the network to another computer.

[mcgyver]

I just had the same poblem yesterday. At first I ran Rescue & Restore from the hidden partition (pressed the ThinkVantage button when I turned on the laptop) but it couldn't see the harddisk.

Finally what I did was boot up with the windows setup cd and go to recovery console and from there run 'chkdsk.exe /f' to fix bad sectors/corrupted file system. It took a couple of hours to scan my 80GB harddisk but after that, I could reboot.