Rebuilding/Recovering MFT
 

seems like My master file table was lost/corrupt somehow and I cannot even access the partition anymore. Right now I'm booting from ubcd. About half of the apps still recognize the partition as NTFS, while the other half list it as unknown/unpartitioned file system. Using the PC Inspector I can actually still see almost all of the files, except the documents and settings folders and files, which leads me to believe that either the mirror MFT is still intact or that MFT can be restored.

Anyways, if anyone can tell me of a way to restore the backup MFT or for some software to scan the drive and rebuild it it'll be a lot of help.

Can you try CHKDSK? (Boot off your Windows XP CD, and try to go to the Recovery Console)

Sounds like a good idea, it may be worth running chkdsk /f as it'll fix any errors found.

already did that, both /f and /r booted off ubcd says corrupt mft before it even starts scanning.

In a bit of "a turn for worse" type update, I tried to use testdrive and tried to rebuild the boot sector (which includes the mft) on the bad partition. It took 10 hours to search through the entire hard drive and finally reported that both the backup copies are bad as well. Now, the bios can't even detect the hard drive anymore (tried on 2 computers). I know it wasn't dead before (the fact that the fat32 partition is functional and that I can scan the NTFS disk and browse the directories). So, is there any way to recover a hard drive that can't be read by 2 different PC bios? Thanks in advance.

Oh and by saying that bios isn't detecting the hd, I mean right now there isn't a way for me to tell it's not a dead hard drive. Windows, various partition recovery as well as disk utilities aren't detecting the drive at all because it's not even recognized at bios. Again, this happened right after I scanned for bootsector backups with testdrive, with both the backups showed up as identical and identically bad.

Hmm ouch, doesn't sound to good. What make of hard drive is it?

It almost sounds like the HD wasn't completely dead before (but that it wasn't just a broken MFT issue), just biding its time, but more activity completely killed it. :\

hitachi travelstar, it's a laptop hd. afaik they make most of the 100 gb models on laptop. At this point I guess my only option is send it back to gateway for repair, although I'd still kill to know as to WHY my hd died overnight.

I guess I'll make a chronological event list.

1. Left laptop on overnight downloading Chessbase Fritz 9 on torrent with ABC.
2. Woke up, found the laptop powered off. Prompted missing MBR upon boot after bios.
3. Used XP disc to boot into repair console and used FixMBR.
4. Rebooted, now computer prompts disk read error, a symptom of missing MFT.
5. Tried repair installation via XP cd but now the partition is in unrecognized format and requires formatting.
6. Used Ultimate Bootup CD and ran boot sector virus scan, came up clean.
7. Started scanning for backups for boot sector (and MFT) via Test Disk then aborted seeing how it'll take 10 hours.
8. Used chkdsk with /r and /f separately, each telling me corrupt MFT and aborting.
9. Since I can't use chkdsk, used Disk Check to scan physical layer in case if the hard drive is on verge of failure. Found 3 bad sectors, nothing major.
10. Used PC Inspector File Recovery and was able to see most of the directory and file structure intact.
11. At this point I was hoping to rebuild MFT so I won't have to backup everything and format.
12. Took out laptop hd drive and put it on desktop as primary slave drive through a 3.5"-> ide convertor. Both partitions showed up, but the corrupt one cannot be accessed before formatting.
13. Ran Recover My Files but wasn't able to find the corrupt partition.
14. Ran Test Disk again to rebuild boot sector in last ditch effort before file recovery.
15. Woke up in morning, Test Disk reports both backups of boot sector bad but identical?
16. Hard drive gone from Windows. At first I thought it was dismounted before boot sector scan but noticed it gone from BIOS upon reboot.
17. Took hard drive back to laptop, BIOS does not detect it either. For some reason, CDROM on this laptop is set on primary slave instead of secondary master, so naturally, can't boot from UBCD either.
18. About to send it back for repair, unless someone can come up with a better idea.

In reply to bm, the laptop was purchased 3 months ago. My other Hitachi Travelstar survived since early 05 and has more intense activities. Of course it might just be a bad drive but I haven't seen any previous indications prior to the corrupt MFT. There is always the chance that all 3 sectors where MFT is located went bad simultaneously, but I don't believe in that kind of luck >.>

Had you tried the convert cmd?

CONVERT C: /fs:ntfs

Are you even able to access cmd?