Fixing a corrupted Windows partition?

orangecat · November 9, 2013

I got a laptop to fix from a friend and the Windows partition is not working i assume its corrupted. I plugged the drive in and I can see a recovery partition and the system reserved but the install of Windows is not accessible. I don't really know what to do unless i format the drive but the guy who owns this laptop says he has music he made on the laptop and would like to save it if possible so i intend on doing so. i don't really know what to do unless i use a file recovery software but i don't want 99% of the files being named random names and ending up with millions of files to go through and find out what is his music.

Any recommendations?

Altecice · November 9, 2013

Most OEM laptops come with a built in recovery partition that require some keys to be pressed to load on start-up. but yeah he will loose any data.

the only solution you have it to use a good file recovery software and leave it scanning for .mp3 and others (might take many many hours depending on the size of the drive) and go from there.

and charge him for the time.

orangecat · November 9, 2013

Most OEM laptops come with a built in recovery partition that require some keys to be pressed to load on start-up. but yeah he will loose any data.

the only solution you have it to use a good file recovery software and leave it scanning for .mp3 and others (might take many many hours depending on the size of the drive) and go from there.

and charge him for the time.

The problem is I can't access any of the files on the "working" partitions because the drive it trying to read the Windows partition.

Altecice · November 9, 2013

do you have a computer running linux and you can plug the drive into? or just a bootable disk that means you can access the drive when its a slave and not being used, giving you access to files?

solomongrundy · November 9, 2013

Do you see the Windows logo at boot atleast?

I got a laptop to fix from a friend and the Windows partition is not working i assume its corrupted. I plugged the drive in and I can see a recovery partition and the system reserved but the install of Windows is not accessible. I don't really know what to do unless i format the drive but the guy who owns this laptop says he has music he made on the laptop and would like to save it if possible so i intend on doing so. i don't really know what to do unless i use a file recovery software but i don't want 99% of the files being named random names and ending up with millions of files to go through and find out what is his music.

Any recommendations?

grayperview · November 9, 2013

Ok, you may need to get some data recovery software, and do whats called a raw recovery of the data, even if the partition table of the partition is broken (which is sounds like) you should still be able to recover all the data intact, depending on the size of the partition and the amount of data this can take anywhere from an hour to 2 or 3 days.

If you have a windows xp 32bit PC try and use ontrack, if you have XP don't there are other programs out there that can do it (had to do it myself), the name of the software i used escapes me for now though.