great support

[Xen1969]

First things first.

I don't know if I'll need to buy Recover My Files yet or not, but I am very very impressed by the technical support offered for this product on this board. This is so rare these days. Give yourselves a pat on the back, especially given that you are working with people who are in a panic at having lost data.

My situation: I had a missing or corrupt ntfs.sys last week on my 160 gig IDE Seagate (main boot drive). Normally this isn't too big a deal -- you go into recovery console and replace ntfs.sys from the XP CD per Microsoft instructions.

I can't do this (I've tried) -- I think because I use this drive through a SIIG controller (so my older computer can see the full 160 gig). Unfortunately I also tried doing a repair install but I can't load the SIIG driver when it says press F6 to load a third party driver (maybe because of the ntfs.sys missing).

I have the computer running now on an old 30-40 gig IDE running directly on the motherboard. I've ordered a USB external enclosure to put the 160 gig drive in. It will be here on Tuesday.

I'm hoping the drive contents will be readable as a secondary drive and I will simply be able to replace the ntfs.sys and all will be well and bootable. If not, hope I can read the contents to transfer it to another media.

If that fails, I think I'm looking at Recover My Files to recover what I can. It sounds like RMF would still be able to read such a drive (assuming no physical damage) ?

If you care to comment on my situation and whether Recover My Files is a solution, I welcome your expertise. Nothing is critical in my case, just stuff I would really like to have.

Either way, I will certainly remember you and refer you to anyone I know who loses data. I am really impressed by your support here.

[GDH]

Hi,

Yes, you best option is to connect your drive as a secondary drive on another PC and then you should just be able to read the important data off it. I would definitely do this, and make a backup of what is important before your tried to repair the drive and get it booting again.

If you strike any problems you can still use Recover My Files - yes it will work in all situations other than when your drive has mechanical problems. The main thing in data recovery is to remember to not write data to the drive so that you avoid overwriting and destroying the missing files.