Contents > Common Questions

Chapter 3. COMMON QUESTIONS

The following tips are designed to help with data recovery.

3.1. Virus Attack.

I know my partition is damaged because my drive was attacked by a virus. The partition cannot be recognized nor scanned. What can I do about this?

Problem Assessment:

Due to the virus attack the computer will not boot from the hard drive and FDISK displays a partition of unknown type. Active@ Partition Recovery also shows the partition to be "Unknown" type and does not allow previewing and scanning.

Probable Reason:

When a partition type is displayed as "Unknown", it is likely to be damaged. Active@ Partition Recovery cannot handle data within partitions of this type. It does not allow files or data to be viewed in this condition. The partition does exist, however, and the task is to reveal the partition as "Unallocated'' space.

Solution:

Start the Active@ Partition Recovery program with a parameter -ignoreMBR to ignore the Main Boot Record default partitions. Please see Scanning Damaged Areas for details.

3.2. MBR Corruption.

How can I protect my hard drive from Master Boot Record (MBR) corruption?

Problem Assessment:

In some situations such as a virus attack, power surge, etc, the Master Boot Record can become damaged. If this happens, the computer becomes un-responsive and will not start from the hard drive.

Solution:

The solution is simple if you have previously created a backup of the Master Boot Record and partition information prior to the disaster event. Using Active@ Partition Recovery you can easily recover and restore the Master Boot Record from a floppy disk.

Boot the machine using a system recovery floppy and run Active@ Partition Recovery, restoring the Master Boot Record from the backup.

NOTE: IT IS STRONGLY ADVISED TO MAKE MBR AND PARTITION TABLE BACKUP EVERY TIME THE COMPUTER CONFIGURATION IS CHANGED (SUCH AS ADDING OR REMOVING HARD DRIVES, PARTITIONS, LOGICAL DRIVES).

Please see Backing Up MBR Data in the previous chapter for details.

Also see 3.5. "FDISK and Windows 98 Limitations below".

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