[Flyright]

After trying everything on this Guide, I ran TESTDISK on the unbootable Barracuda.

Choosing the "analyze" option told me what I already knew - that I didn't have a bootable partition. I didn't know which option to choose beyond that, so I left it alone for awhile and salvaged as much stuff as I could or wanted to off the unbootable disk, then choose some other options to see if TESTDISK could make the disk bootable again.

Now that disk appears completely empty. Good thing I got what I wanted off of it. (I HOPE I got everything I wanted and not find out a month from now that I didn't.)

I doubt TESTDISK wiped everything off the disk and I suppose using yet another utility I could go back in and see the leftovers. As of now though it shows 146GB free out of a total of 149GB. What's in the other 3? Only the Shadow knows.

I would NOT recommend TESTDISK to anyone unless they are a very experienced user. If I had not had the good sense to retrieve my stuff before using it I would have lost everything. If I had used TESTDISK properly, just as if I had used GHOST properly, these disasters probably wouldn't have happened.

The stuff may still be there. I know data retrieval utilities are available. I'm going to set the disk aside for a while and see if I'm missing anything important enough to go digging into it anymore. If there's nothing on it that warrants more effort with it, I'll reformat it and use if for a clone.

This experience has taught me certain things.

1. Stay the hell away from Norton Ghost (and everything else Symantec, for that matter.)

2. Get to know intimately a disk cloning program and use it regularly. Keep at least one recently-cloned disk - one that is tested as bootable and a precise duplicate of the primary disk.

I have not DONE this yet . . . I'm just saying this is what I intend to do from now on. I'm just a poor sinner.

Thanks for all the responses on this problem I caused myself. I tried all the options available on this thread and, sad to say, none of them worked. I'm left with three words of wisdom: CLONE THE HD

Mike

[TRS-80 vet]

What can I do to make certain that before OS XP re-install, I've got everything out of the pc that I've put in there?

My C drive has only 11G of jam on it. One of the options for rt click on C drive is 'copy'. What gets copied?

[bernardus]

ON the latest famous HirenBootup cd you will find a windows like program with a browser that will at least give you access to files and to copy them. A second option is to mount a second drive with windows and save all you need.
If you have no Bootuo string you cannot load. The mentioned Cd offers a posibility to create a bootup record. loading e new windows version will give you the option to save things. Especially the pst or Dbx file of outlook end OE. You could also clone your drive to another one and start a fresh installation. later you can copy neccesary files. Be carefull with cloning you end up with two Primary drives.
bernardus.

[JohnWill]

This thread really was never intended to be a catch-all for multiple problems to be posted.

I'm going to close this thread, please post an individual thread on issues.