What Can I do if Partition Boot Sector is Damaged?
- If you have backup of the whole disk or MBR/Boot Sectors we can try to restore it from there.
- If you do not have backup, in case of NTFS we could try to locate the duplicate of Partition Boot Sector and get information from there.
- If duplicate boot sector is not found, only virtual partition recovery might be possible; and this depends on whether or not we can determine critical partition parameters such as Sectors per Cluster, etc.
Fixing NTFS Boot Sector Using Standard Windows NT/2000/XP Tools
On NTFS, a copy of the boot sector is stored at the middle or at the end of the Volume.
You can boot from a startup floppy disk or CD-ROM,choose the "Repair" option during setup, and run Recovery Console. When you are logged on, you can run FIXBOOT command to try to fix boot sector.
How can Recovery Software Help in This Situation?
- A recovery utility can backup MBR, Partition Table and Boot Sectors and restore them in case of damage
- It can try to find the duplicate boot sector on the drive and re-create the original one or perform virtual data recovery based on found partition parameters
- Some advanced techniques allow assuming drive parameters even if duplicate boot sector is not found (i.e. perform virtual partition recovery) and give the user virtual access to the data on the drive to be able to copy them to the safer location.
