Can DD 10 help with this scenario ?

My configuration: HDD 250GB SATA, 5 partitions (50GB each), WinXP SP2.

3 days ago, after a reboot, the system refused to load Windows (registry problem). I booted the WinXP CD, and I found that C and D partitions were of RAW type. C had only Windows and installed programs, so there was no problem to format it and reinstall (I'm thinking about buying Acronis TI because will really speed up the restore process).

The problem is with D partition. I tried a chkdsk d: /f, but I got this: The type of the filesystem is NTFS. Unable to determine drive volume version and state.
A friend of mine with a recovery CD with some utilities used Easy Recovery Pro to access the D partition and was able to "see" all the files. I saved the important ones on a USB device and, finally, I reformatted D.

My conclusion was (and PLEASE, correct me if I'm wrong) that the MBR and some Volume Boot Sectors were damaged. I wonder why...

And now, the big Q: is there an Acronis product that can help me to backup and restore MBRs, Partition Tables and Volume Boot Sectors ? I'm pointing my finger of course to DD 10, because - if I understand correctly - Acronis TI can only help me with a fast restauration of the system partition (YMMV)

And, if not, what would you recommend ?

 

First, the chkdsk command that might have been more useful would have been chkdsk /r , this searchs and repairs sectors. Something for the arsenal next time!

With DD10 you can copy the MBR to another drive, however TI will in fact make copies of all that you mention when making a disk image, partition images will only contain partiton information. However you are not able to just restore the MBR for example, though if everything was damaged you'd probably want to re-image the disk anyhow.

Colin

 

My big problem was being unable to acces the D partition.

I think that if I had a backup of the MBR, Partition Table and Volume Boot Sector, by restoring them, I would be able to browse that partition. I agree, maybe the files / folders were broken, but a chkdsk would fix that (after all readable data was copied by direct copy or some other software).

 

Disk Director has a low-level sector editor that will allow you to copy and save any sector(s) to a file. So if you're careful and you know what you're doing you can save the MBR (which also contains the partition table) and any partition boot records to files. You can later restore them, again if you're careful and you know what you're doing.

I learned a lot by snooping around with the disk editor, creating test partitions, messing with the partition boot records, etc. The exercise was a valuable learning experience and made the purchase of DD worthwhile for this alone.