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Thank you. I'm pretty confused, though. <br />
The hard drive appears in hardware profie and is said to be functioning, but I can't get to it in any manner. From within a command prompt window, I can't see anything. <br />
The drive's letter is F: (a CD drive &amp;&nbsp;a DVD drive are drives D &amp;&nbsp;E).<br />
From C:\&gt; I can see all files on C: drive. &nbsp;But if I type &quot;dir F:&quot; &nbsp;or &quot;F:&quot; &nbsp;I get &quot;cyclic redundancy error&quot; <br />
From the suggestions above, because I can't perform any operation on F, I am wondering if I should try the fdisk /mbr command. &nbsp;I am guessing the command would be:<br />
C:\&gt; chkdsk f: /mbr <br />
1. Is that DOS command correct? <br />
2. Will this preserve the data on &nbsp;the disk? &nbsp;I am &quot;afraid&quot; of that fdisk command ! &nbsp; <br />

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Thank you all.<br />
dbrunton: &nbsp;thank you, I will do that now &amp;&nbsp;let you know what happens
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1. Thank you for that last comment. &nbsp;I've never cloned a drive, although I actually have Norton and Partition Magic software from a few years ago that I believe contain cloning software.<br />
&nbsp; &nbsp;QUESTION (1): &nbsp;can I close to an external drive? The computer into which I've placed the damaged drive is a 2002 Dell with only 526 MB RAM and USB 1.1. ports. <br />
&nbsp; &nbsp;<br />
&nbsp; &nbsp; QUESTION(2): Once I clone the drive to an image on the good drive, how do I run recovery on this image? Do I need a third drive onto which I must place the cloned image? <br />
&nbsp;<br />
<br />
2. As for follow-up to prior recommendations: &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<br />
&nbsp; a. &nbsp;I tried GetDataBack and indeed all the data does appear to be recoverable. It costs $70 to recover the data so I have not yet tried this. <br />
&nbsp;<br />
&nbsp; b. &nbsp;Recuva did not work at all: says &quot;Data error (cyclic redundancy check).&quot;<br />
&nbsp;<br />
&nbsp; c. PC Inspector by Convar yielded interesting results. It recovered a bunch of files easily but then hung up, giving the following error message: &quot;NT read error. Error No.23 &nbsp;drv:129LBA: 6314607 blocks:1120&quot; <br />
Options are to Abort, Retry or Ignore: none of these work. The only way to progress is to open task manager and close down the NT read error process, which in turn closes down the program. <br />
<br />
The failing hard drive is only six months old, but I'm sure they will charge me to recover any data, so I am probably going to be stuck buying GetDataBack. &nbsp;<br />
<br />
If I may ask &nbsp;dbrunton &nbsp;&amp; &nbsp;Davis McCarn: what would you do right now? &nbsp;<br />
<br />
Thanks very much. 
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Thanks, everyone. &nbsp;<br />
This was the only place (and I'd tried several others including Spotmau technical support) that recommended slaving the hard drive -- what a good idea. I wish I had done that right away. &nbsp;<br />
Lessons learned:<br />
&nbsp; 1. Slave a failing disk ASAP to get data back<br />
&nbsp; 2. GetDataBack is a powerful program that can skip disk errors and still retrieve a fair amount of data. <br />
&nbsp; 3. Experts Exchange is the way to go for solutions. I wish I'd known about this before. <br />
Outcome for my problem: I retrieved a fair amount of data from GetDataBack. Even if some of the files are bad, at least I got the directory structures back for My Documents almost in its entirety. Adding this information to my last Windows Backup should result in a satisfactory outcome. <br />
&nbsp; Thanks again. 
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Thank you all very much. I gave everyone points. This is my first time using EE. I wish I could contribute myself. &nbsp; <br />
Question: &nbsp;Would any of you mind sharing what program you personally use for backup of home/ personal PCs? &nbsp; It seems to me that Windows restore points are largely exercises in futilty. I now use the Windows Live Oncare service but have not had to restore anything from it until now... I guess I'll find out how it fares. &nbsp;Sincerely, DAR 
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You actually asked several different questions.....<br />
For data backup, I use CopyTo (since the mid '90s) and it backs up my email, favorites, data, and pictures every night to another computer on my network. &nbsp;SyncBack, Karen's Replicator, and Cobian Backup are all great freeware that do the same job.<br />
Windoze' System Restore has never included your files and is horribly problematical with an especially nasty tendency to &quot;fail&quot; if a rootkit or trojan has invaded your system. &nbsp;Way better, IMHO, is ERUNT and here is my article on it: <a href="http://www.computer-help.net/Best-Registry-Backup.html" rel="ugc">http://www.computer-help.n<wbr />et/Best-Re<wbr />gistry-Bac<wbr />kup.html</a><br />
I also include in my &quot;Essential Security&quot; the free version of <a href="http://www.hdtune.com" rel="ugc">http://www.hdtune.com</a> and will run the error scan at the first hint of a hard disk problem or about once a year, just for safety's sake.<br />

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&gt;&gt; Question: Would any of you mind sharing what program you personally use for backup of home/ personal PCs?<br />
<br />
I have a Linux network server that I backup to. &nbsp;I use robocopy - a Microsoft util - to copy the files I need backups of to the server. &nbsp;This is done through a batch file that specifies the folders that I want to copy. &nbsp;The same could be done through an external USB drive.<br />
<br />
For backing up the Windows box itself - I don't. &nbsp;I create the box and install all of my applications and then make an image of the drive that I can restore if the box goes down.<br />
<br />
If I have to restore I'll have to patch all my apps and files and install any new apps but that's a small price to pay for getting the system back and running.
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I use BartPE to create images of my PC.<br />
<a href="http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/" rel="ugc">http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/</a><br />
<br />
As dbrunton, I setup the Windows box and install everything I want, then create the image.<br />

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<div class="content wysiwyg-content">
I am having the error message &quot;Unmountable Boot Volume.&quot; &nbsp;I'm not sure how I first saw it, because the blue screen flashes by so quickly, but at one point I was able to freeze it and see the error message. &nbsp;<br />
What happens consistently is that I cannot boot into Safe Mode or anything else. <br />
I tried running the Windows Recovery console, but once I get to C:\ and type C:\chkdsk /r, I am told that autochk.exe cannot be found. &nbsp; Upon other advice I tried &quot;Expand F:\I386\HAL.DL_ C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\hal.dl<wbr />l&quot; where F is my CD/DVD-ROM. This command was to help me copy the original file to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32. However, this did nothing as I was then simply told &quot;Access is Denied.&quot;<br />
I then came across Experts Exchange and the suggestion from your site (from a 2005 posting)that I slave the disk to another computer to recover the data. I have done this, the drive is recognized and given a drive letter, but it is said to have not been formatted. This is not correct, obviously. <br />
I have the disk backed up except for about 40 hours or so of work performed since the last backup... of course these kinds of errors only occur at the end of a work week, immediately prior to the next scheduled backup. &nbsp;But I digress... any ideas? &nbsp;Thanks. &nbsp; <br />
<br />

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I am having the error message "Unmountable Boot Volume."  I'm not sure how I first saw it, because the blue screen flashes by so quickly, but at one point I was able to freeze it and see the error message.  
What happens consistently is that I cannot boot into Safe Mode or anything else. 
I tried running the Windows Recovery console, but once I get to C:\ and type C:\chkdsk /r, I am told that autochk.exe cannot be found.   Upon other advice I tried "Expand F:\I386\HAL.DL_ C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\hal.dll" where F is my CD/DVD-ROM. This command was to help me copy the original file to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32. However, this did nothing as I was then simply told "Access is Denied."
I then came across Experts Exchange and the suggestion from your site (from a 2005 posting)that I slave the disk to another computer to recover the data. I have done this, the drive is recognized and given a drive letter, but it is said to have not been formatted. This is not correct, obviously. 
I have the disk backed up except for about 40 hours or so of work performed since the last backup... of course these kinds of errors only occur at the end of a work week, immediately prior to the next scheduled backup.  But I digress... any ideas?  Thanks.   



slaved hard drive is said to not be formatted

Storage devices include any device used for storing and retrieving digital information. Hard disk drives (HDDs) use one or more rigid ("hard") rapidly rotating disks (platters) coated with magnetic material. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any order and not only sequentially. The primary competing technology for secondary storage is flash memory in the form of solid-state drives (SSDs), but HDDs remain the dominant medium for secondary storage due to advantages in price per bit and per-device recording capacity. CD-RW (Compact Disc-ReWritable) is a digital optical disc storage format that allows information to be stored outside the mechanical HDD.

Storage Hardware

A personal computer is a general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities and price make it useful for individuals, and is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer time-sharing models that allowed systems to be used by many people, usually at the same time. Personal computers may be connected to a local area network (LAN), either by a cable or a wireless connection, and through that to the Internet. A personal computer may be a laptop computer or a desktop computer running an operating system such as Windows, Linux or Macintosh OS.