Unmountable Boot Volume

captaink

I woke up this morning and turned my computer on to a lovely BSOD with Unmountable_boot_volume as the main message. I've been googling around, and it seems that to fix it I need to run repair utilities from my Vista 64 CD.

Where I get fuzzy is this: It has a screen after you choose to repair that says to choose your windows installation. Presumably my C: drive is supposed to show up. It does not. I can load hard drive drivers from my motherboard CD, but they don't make C: show up either. If I click next, it doesn't seem to mind. I'm not sure it's actually doing anything though.

I'm currently working on this http://www.ehow.com/how_5584095_fix-unmountable-boot-volume.html

The CD is really slow to load though, so I am waiting for it currently.

Hopefully my hard drive hasn't crapped out completely?

captaink

When I bring up the command prompt from the windows CD it is set to X: drive.

Great Scott

It sounds like you are doing the right things. One quick way to perform a sanity check on your hardware is to either 1) Load a Linux distro from a CD/DVD and see if the drive shows up, or 2) pull out the drive, put it in a USB shell, and check it from another computer. EDIT: Note that putting the drive in a USB shell/case gives you the option to try low-level recovery software to get your files back (I use R-Studio NTFS, personally).

I assume you aren't hearing any grinding noises?

Note that if your hard drive really is going, it will have a limited life left, so I'd recommend not trying to run the repair utilities over and over again.

captaink

Running bootrec.exe /fixboot from the X: drive didn't work. Didn't figure it would.

A USB enclosure is something like this, right? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182221

I might get that just to have one. If the drive is only partly damaged, I could use it to recover files, right? I am mostly backed up but I have a goddamn act V Witcher 1 save I'd hate to give up, for one.

May run over to Fry's and get that USB enclosure.

captaink

I made a post here a long while back about my computer sometimes bluescreening, then giving me a boot read error on restart. I think that may have been a flag that this hard drive was not completely healthy. It has done that intermittently for quite a while.

Great Scott

Yes, that's exactly the right kind of case to get for repair work.

I would check it quickly from another PC to see if it is damaged and how much. If it's readable, copy off things in order of importance - then check the drive using the manufacturer's software to see if there is any damage.

If the drive is partly damaged, in my experience, you have between two and eight hours of limping along left. You should keep the drive turned off as much as is possible.

Recovery software can be really expensive, but it can be considered an investment as it can be used the next time this happens. For one example, R-Studio (full version) is 80 USD.

If you are planning to use recovery software, there is usually a free version that you can try. I'd get familiar with it before using it on the damaged drive so that you don't have to keep it running as much. Note that depending on drive size it can take 24+ hours to do a full low-level scan (that was for a completely full, slow, 750GB drive).

captaink

My other PC is a crummy work laptop that I don't particularly want to use for this kind of work. I have an old desktop at home, maybe.

Might just go get an enclosure and new disk at Fry's. Fresh install of Vista to the new disk, load up the USB, and see what I can see.

captaink

The SeaTools short test failed about 5 seconds in, so it must be bad. The Long test says it may repair errors, so I am running it.

captaink

Hah! Seatools fixed it. Thank you Seagate!

Spudge

Use some sort of cloning software and replace that drive

It's not done crapping out yet

captaink

You're probably right. I'm looking at: http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

I would just buy a second (same size or larger) drive, run that program, and then I have an image file on the second drive. Would I need to do anything further? Or do I just slot the new drive in when the original fails, or when I feel like swapping?

Spudge

That runtime program looks like it'll do the job just fine, though if you buy a larger drive it may only partition the previous drive's size for the image. Not sure, haven't used the program, etc etc

Install the new drive, image, then just go ahead and swap. No point in holding on to a disk so near to death any way

Edcrab

captaink wrote: »

I made a post here a long while back about my computer sometimes bluescreening, then giving me a boot read error on restart. I think that may have been a flag that this hard drive was not completely healthy. It has done that intermittently for quite a while.

This is something that literally happened to me this morning.

If this thread is anything to go by, I take it my HD is on its way out and I need to backup everything before it snuffs it?

Spudge

Yes

You can check your system event logs for HDD/SATA/ATAPI flags that will confirm the diagnosis as well