Reviving your HD from MBR failure

I've searched high and low. And finally, I found a cure! About 5 days ago, my 40GB Maxtor HD all of a sudden went "Offline". The Partitions were no longer readable. So naturally, I checked the Computer Management console to see what's the problem...

I right-clicked the physical drive to "Reactivate" it to "Online" again, but failed, giving me an error message that its "Unreadable". Worried that I'm gonna lose ALL my digital photos and important documents (I'm lazy at backing up), I dare not do anything, but did extensive research as to what the problem may be.

Everywhere I looked, especially on the Microsoft sites, they kept talking about the bad of Dynamic disks and that once corrupted, there's no turning back. But there was one portion where it mentioned that partition data, if corrupted can cause drives to appear "Offline" or "Unreadable". So I did further research on that.

At the same time, I was trying to do the 'traditional' data recovery process, using SpinRite, which kept saying that my partitions are intact and that the data is there, but my Windows XP can't seem to recognize it, that's all...

Subsequently, I found that whenever it's a partition problem, that means there something wrong with the MBR Table. Its a table where data is stored to keep track of how big, where, what type of data is on the drive. Something like a library card catalogue to point to the precise book on the bookshelves...

So, I frantically looked for a MBR fixer-upper. They say that there is a backup of the MBR Table stored in a hiddne partition of the HD, so I was riding on that in hopes that I'll be able to find a utility to help with that. I've been looking and looking, but all were licensed commericial software, but the demos did achieve in simulating the fix, so I was tempted. These included Arconix, PPTD and DiskPart. But then, out of the blue, I came across a FREE opensource utility by CGSecurity called TESTDISK. And I'm a living testamonial!

I now swear by it! No need to boot to anything, becasue lucky for me it wasn't my boot drive/partition. (Note, that they even have a option to revive such cases as well!) VERY simple easy to use. Reading the guide really quickly, I downloaded the Win version, extracted, run the program and there it was... I saw the "missing" partitions that were supposed to be visible in Windows but now only visible to TestDisk. Then, I needed to confirm that the partitions, which I believe it was reading from the hidden MBR Table backup, were indeed the correct ones. If it was not, I risked losing ALL my data! And what it did next was just PURE MAGIC! It recreated the MBR Table and then asked me to reboot, which I gladly did...

And there it was, Windows XP rebooted, I let chkdsk run for good measure (despite knowing that MANY condemn that the builtin Windows chkdsk is crap and only ruins a HD). I was in Cloud 9 when it finally booted to my beloved desktop and found the partitions are back "ONLINE"! Whooppeee!!

Next thing I know, I was grabbing all my available blank DVDs and backing up everything on that drive before it fails on me again...

So there you go folks! If you ever have a failed drive and you suspect that your partition table or MBR table or whatever you wanna call it is broken/corrupted. I'd recommend using TestDisk. The same people also have a data recovery tool called PhotoRec. Haven't tried it myself, but I'm sure it'll execute as well as it did the TestDisk.

Happy reviving!