While not free, at www.grc.com Steve Gibson has a program called
SpinRite V6.0 which has a very high rating among many reviewers. It will
work on NTFS and Linux partitions. Provides low level access to drives
and their data. And while it costs $89, may be just what you need. The
site has a lot of info on this product.

Jean Bourvic

Richard Glazier wrote:

>I have one physical hard drive that I use as a DATA only drive.
>It is one big partition fully supported by the BIOS and OS.
>The OS (WinXP-ProSP1) boots from a different physical HD.
>
>The  DATA drive MFT has three bad sectors. (Four bad file record segments.)
>This (unfortunately) makes the ENTIRE drive/(partition) inaccessible.
>(Windows thinks the file system is "RAW")   It is(was) NTFS.
>
>I need to find out if it is possible to "fix" an MFT, or FORCE the use
>of the MFT2.  (This is all "supposed to be" automatic...)
>
>As a second choice, I would like to get a FREE data recovery program
>that would at least let me "see" what is on the drive.
>
>I "could" optionally erase the entire drive... It has backups of the BOOT
>drive and several other drives, and ALL my personal stuff is in there...
>
>The drive in question is a Maxtor 160G Purchased new - Retail 11/26/04
>
>Thanks in advance for any/all suggestions.
>
>                              Rick Glazier
>
>              The NOSPIN Group is now offering Free PC Tech
>                     support at our newest website:
>                          http://freepctech.com
>
>
>
>

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