Tech Support Forum - View Single Post - Invalid boot sector and all partitions lost

intmmsp · 05-03-2008, 05:57 PM

Yesterday, I wanted to re-install XP, and the media I used was an old version which is not bundled with any service pack. After the installation was launched, I found that it could not recognize my SATA hard drive, and there was only an strange partition with unknown format on the SATA drive.

I have another IDE drive and so I tried to install the OS into the first partition of the IDE drive. But before I could proceed, I was asked to format the C: drive on the SATA drive. Then, I reboot my computer using my Super Grub disk, and I found that I could not verify the disk geometry of my sata drive.

I remove the SATA drive from the system, and installed windows server 2003on the IDE, which is the one I am using right now. In addition, I hooked the SATA drive back up and now I can only see a icon in my computer but as soon as i click on it, the OS reminds me of formatting that partition.

I tried testdisk... on the page of quick search, the current partition structure of the SATA drive was detected as invalid FAT16 boot sector. I also did quick search, but i was told that the partitions were not able to be recovered.

In the disk management of windows server 2003, the SATA drive is healthy and the capacity is only 128GB, which is supposed to be 320GB with 4 partitions.

What should I do next? Could someone please give me some suggestion, I really appreciate it.

05-03-2008, 05:57 PM	#1 (permalink)
intmmsp Registered User Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 3 OS: server2003	Invalid boot sector and all partitions lost Yesterday, I wanted to re-install XP, and the media I used was an old version which is not bundled with any service pack. After the installation was launched, I found that it could not recognize my SATA hard drive, and there was only an strange partition with unknown format on the SATA drive. I have another IDE drive and so I tried to install the OS into the first partition of the IDE drive. But before I could proceed, I was asked to format the C: drive on the SATA drive. Then, I reboot my computer using my Super Grub disk, and I found that I could not verify the disk geometry of my sata drive. I remove the SATA drive from the system, and installed windows server 2003on the IDE, which is the one I am using right now. In addition, I hooked the SATA drive back up and now I can only see a icon in my computer but as soon as i click on it, the OS reminds me of formatting that partition. I tried testdisk... on the page of quick search, the current partition structure of the SATA drive was detected as invalid FAT16 boot sector. I also did quick search, but i was told that the partitions were not able to be recovered. In the disk management of windows server 2003, the SATA drive is healthy and the capacity is only 128GB, which is supposed to be 320GB with 4 partitions. What should I do next? Could someone please give me some suggestion, I really appreciate it.