Rebuilding NTFS File Table / MBR

[rashly]

Ok, I was trying to set up my dual boot system with XP and Fedora Linux (my 2 sata raid0 drives already have an ntfs partition for windows, and another drive on the ide ata will have Linux) and my NTFS master boot record got wiped out somehow. The data was not overwritten or anything, but the ntfs disk is just seen as unpartitioned space (the table formatting system was scrwed somehow). How can I rebuild the NTFS partition table and MBR on that raid array as to keep the data.

Will freeware MSDOS utilites recognize it as 2 individual disk or 1 raid partition?

Thanks.

 

[Dio]

You'll be lucky. Last time I had an NTFS drive with bad MBR I had to get the recovery software out. Got about 40% of the drive back.

Hopefully there is some method that I don't know about that will help you.

 

[Crusher]

If it's using an on-board raid controller, no software should see it as 2 separate disks, however MSDOS was a few years before NTFS was created, and doesn't read NTFS formatted disks.

You can try running the recovery console (by inserting the CD-ROM and choosing to repair an installation) and run a program called FIXMBR and giving the hard drive you want to repair as the first argument, like so:

fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0

(you may want to remove the linux drive while you do this so you are sure you're getting the right disk)

 

[rashly]

yeah. tried all of that and alot of 3rd party software. nothing worked.

ended up formating and reinstalling xp. lost about 4 months of data. nothing terribly important, but still sucks.