Wirehead Studios

Time for me to rant.  The NTFS file system is a wonderful thing.  It works well, it's reliable, and it's an improvement over the old FAT and FAT32 systems.  That being said, I've just spent a lot of time over the last three days attempting in vain to recover a 74 GB NTFS partition for a friend.  Honestly we have no idea how the damage was done to the drive.  One moment the files were there, the next boot up, the partition shows as not formatted.  There was no obvious reason as to why this happened.  It just did.  Now as for what happened, there's a neat little thing on the drive called the MFT, or Master File Table.  It's like the old File Allocation Table from Dos, except it's NTFS's version.  There's also a backup copy called the MFT mirror.  If one is damaged, it can be repaired with the other.  If both are damaged...  YOU ARE SCREWED.  And, so is my friend's computer now inoperable with near 100% data loss.  Even using a professional recovery program I was able to retrieve only about 20 GB worth of data, and most of it is unreadable random characters when the actual files are examined.  The drive is fine physically, but without the MFT, the partition is gone and I don't have any friends at the Pentagon who owe me any favors, nor does my friend have a few thousand dollars for a data recovery service to do a microscan of the drive surface to try to get the MFT back.  Before anyone asks, yes I tried Recovery Console, Fixboot, Fixmbr, chkdsk /r, chkdsk /p /r, Program A, Program B, and some very low-level stuff as well.

So... if you don't back up your files, you might want to consider doing so.  One small glitch with the hard drive can make 60 GB of data vanish instantaneously, and can lead to wasted time, endless frustration, and a general sense of futility, not to mention the loss of irreplaceable data of great importance.  Hopefully nothing bad will happen to MY drive before I get a chance to do my next backup.
:thud:

As long as the partition wasn't rewritten, and it only lost the MFT, good recovery software should have absolutely no problem recovery all the data from the partition.  GDB (GetDataBack) is something I've had for years.  There probably are new products out there, but I have never had a problem recovering data from a drive with a corrupted MFT (I've had to do this more than once when windows decided it didn't like having linux on the drive as well).  The partition doesn't need to exist for the software to find the "lost" filesystem.  Obviously, if what caused the MFT to be erased was serious corruption, more than likely it would have corrupted more parts of the drive unless it was just a simple virus that wipes out the MFT. 

Hell, I even back-up the movies on my harddisks..

I recently discovered that my CD-burner no longer burns CD's anymore.  I'm rather pissed about it since the thing is only a few years old, but I suppose it's time for me to move up in the world and get a DVD-burner.  I was trying to hold out until BD or HD-DVD burners were priced at a more consumer-friendly level. :p

But yeah, I really should back up some of my more important files.

If only the MFT was lost it would not be a problem, but it lost both the MFT and the mirror copy.  As I said, I've tried program A, program B, etc.  GDB was one of the programs I used, and it produced identical recovery results as every other "good" program I used.

Kain:  I've been using a Pioneer DVR-109 DVD-RW drive for quite a while, and I've been pretty impressed with it.  I did a great deal of research on drive reliability before purchasing a DVD recorder (they typically ran $100-$400 at the time I bought mine).  They've changed models quite a bit, but you might check NewEgg.  Here's one of the current models (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827129018) available.  The price is a steal, and I've not produced a single "coaster", CD or DVD.  It reads disks I can't read in my other drive.  I know a lot of people recommend LiteOn drives, but I've read mixed reviews about their reliability, especially on cheaper media.  Right now the Blu-ray burners run $400+.  There are a lot of DVD writers that read blu-ray but do not write blu-ray, those cost around $200, so be careful to tell them apart.  Also I'm not sure whether blu-ray drives are compatible with XP or not, so you'd need to look around on that.  The Pioneer drives are OEM, so you'll need a program like Nero, it does not come with any software.  I'm using Nero 6 Ultra and it does pretty much everything I need it to do.  Drive works with Ghost as well if you prefer that.

As for what to buy, keep in mind that CD's are limited to around 700 mb.  DVD's can hold 4 GB for single-layer, and 8 GB for dual-layer (though dual-layer writes slower).  Blu-ray can hold 25 GB, but the drives cost a small fortune.  I'd say for balance of cost, product maturity, read/write speed, and capacity, DVD+r and DVD+rw is going to be your best bet for data backup.

Well i might add a warning for you ppls who have windows xp install media with no service pack on..dont re-install xp if you have a large drive with for an example your precious movies or mp3s cuz the ol windows xp doesnt support the new large drives, in theory nothing should happen but for me it did..I even didnt install xp on this disk but it still corrupted my drive so I lost quite abit of data -.-

Actually, Reb, I had that issue. My old PC didn't take kindly to SP2, so there's a 20-and-a-bit GB partition on it that I just can't use. Shame, 'cos it could come in handy right now. Good job I never actually used it.

Sweet, thanks for the information Phoenix!

I did a quick perusal through NewEgg.com and even if I wanted a Blu-Ray burner, the drives only support SATA which my motherboard doesn't since it's around five years old.  $30 is a steal though and if you trust Pioneer's stuff to last, it sounds like a worth-while investment.

In the research I did at the time, the DVR-109 performed as well as the then more expensive Plextor drives at half the cost, and burned every kind of media, unlike the LiteOn drives at the time which were temperamental with cheaper disks.  I've had mine for about two years and so far so good.  I'm content and I've had no difficulties.  The only thing I have not attempted to do is copy a retail DVD, but then I've never really had a reason to try.

My faithful LG GSA-4160B, even after 1000+ burns, is yet to break down. Back when I bought this baby, it was one of the best out in the market, so I'm not surprised at it's durability.

Look, here's my advice: don't buy Philips. They're unreliable as hell. Get yourself a nice Plextor.

Heh My old computer did that also. Drove me mentally insane >:(

Well i still have a DVDRAM GSA -4040B running :) imo this burner is incredible never fails and i've used it in 2 diffrent hardware setups by now..shows the quality of LG's stuff.