How do I repair a file system?

[Alacritan]

Alright, it's kind of a long story, but the condensed form is, I was screwing around with the new Omega 4.1 drivers, messed SOMETHING up and Windows won't load, not even in Safe Mode. But then it gets worse. I go to reinstall Windows XP, and it won't get past loading basic files, telling me certain .sys files are corrupted BEFORE it's even started installing. So I go to install Windows 98 because XP is full on retarded, and accidentally it "fixes" my other hard drive, that was NTFS format. 98 wouldn't install without a boot disk anyway, so I didn't install it. So now I've thrown in another drive to get XP running so I could post here to get info how to repair/reconstruct the file system on my other drive. Basically, it's got 57GB of all my games, movies, and porn on it, so I'd really rather not lose it. The files I believe are still intact, but the file system was wiped out by 98 installation because it didn't recognize it.

So the real problem here is not XP (because I'm switching to Linux ASAP), but the damaged file system on my second hard drive. Any applications that can repair it? I don't want to have to do a full reformat and lose all my data.

[shadowdr]

If you can get to a command prompt try the System File checker utility described here (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310747) .First i would use the install disc and try a repair by going to the console and running chkdsk.If you have an emergency repair disc,I would then rerun the repair option using the fast repair option.

[kct2]

I think you are going to need to look into data recovery software, like Ontrack EasyRecovery. That program is a good place to start, but it is one of the more expensive ones available. Try their trial version to see if you can recover any files, then think about which one to buy. The trial is a free download from www.ontrack.com and it will tell you what files the program can recover (but you need to pay to actually recover anything :( )

Depending on how much of the disk was overwritten during the various things you tried some files may be gone (unrecoverable by common software tools); but the ontrack trial program should let you see what is there.

[Alacritan]

I can't use the Windows XP repair function because it keeps telling me certain files are corrupted (on my functioning drive) even before it finishes loading them and I have to restart setup. And I don't think any of the files on the drive have been modified, just the file allocation table was stripped. I need an application to rebuild or reformat the drive without deleting the data on it.

[Como]

maybe try to repartition wiht partition magic? it makes an attempt to keep your fiels and can change file systems in all kinds of weird ways. i like it, only messed up once and i had to start over...course, i've only used it about 25 times, so one failure in 25 uses isnt a good record for me, but its not bad...then again, working wiht a damaged file system in the first place, i dont know if it would work.

[kct2]

Originally posted by Alacritan
I can't use the Windows XP repair function because it keeps telling me certain files are corrupted (on my functioning drive) even before it finishes loading them and I have to restart setup. And I don't think any of the files on the drive have been modified, just the file allocation table was stripped. I need an application to rebuild or reformat the drive without deleting the data on it.

Please try the data recovery software. That is what you need to use. Any other operation you attempt runs a high risk of making your data unrecoverable without prohibitively-expensive data recovery services. The recovery software is specifically design for situations such as yours.

Are you really sure games/movies/porn are worth all this effort? Games came be reinstalled, movies can be re-ripped (I'm sure you aren't talking about downloaded movies, right;) ), and porn can be re-downloaded, you may even find better porn! The games won't be of any use in Linux anyway.

[Alacritan]

57GB on a wireless LAN takes a long time. And I was going to have a dual boot system so I could still play games in Win98. I'll give partition magic a shot for now.