Keep PC Safe

With Microsoft Windows being, in one incarnation or another, the most dominant operating

system on PC’s today, data recovery solutions for it have been well developed. There is a

myriad of software packages out there that can recover lost files. However, there are quite a

few steps that one can take without having to find and install third party software. If the files

have simply been deleted, the obvious solution is to visit the Recycling Bin to recover them.

However, if there has been a drive failure, more drastic steps must be taken.

More often than not, the cause of the apparent disk failure is due to a corrupt Master Boot

Record (MBR) or Partition Table, which often results in a non-booting drive. The most common

response to this is to panic and purchase a new drive, or even a new PC in some cases!

With Windows XP, you can check the partitions and file systems by running the Computer

Management program. To run this utility, select the My Computer icon, and then right click.

From the list of options select manage. This will open the Computer Management window.

On the list on the left side of the window select Disk Management. Windows will display a list of

the hard drives and CD or DVD drives on your computer. For each hard drive, Windows will

specify the file system and the partition structure, as well as the status of the drive. The file

system is how the data and free space are organized so that it the computer can read and write

data to the drive. The primary file systems used by windows are FAT-32 and NTFS. FAT

stands for File Allocation Table, and FAT-32 refers to the use of 32 bit storage elements. Older

versions of Windows, from 95 and earlier, used FAT-16. NTFS, or NT File System, is now the

most common Windows file system, as it is the one primarily used by Windows NT and

Windows XP. Operating systems can generally use older file systems when necessary,

meaning you can install that old hard drive from your Windows 3.11 machine into your new,

Windows XP machine in order to recover any data from it.

Both FAT and NTFS use a master boot record, or MBR, and a partition table in their file

structure. These are always located in the first sector of the drive. An error in the MBR or

partition table will cause Windows to not be able to read any of the files located on that drive.

There are some utilities included in Windows that can sometime fix problems with the partition

table. These are scandisk and chkdsk. The former is used on older Windows platforms, while

the latter is used on Windows NT and XP systems. These applications usually run while

Windows is booting up in order to detect problems caused by an abrupt shutdown. They can

also be run from a floppy disk or your Windows installation CD if your computer is unable to

boot up. You should always start with these utilities when trying to repair errors to your file