Have not been able to find this elsewhere on the net ---
(and YES, please enlighten me to your search techniques !)


I have seen about a lot of hard drives fail.

The C drive is no longer bootable.

Now, in some cases, I've been able to do a CHKDSK and the computer reboots normally.
In other cases, needed to do a system restore/repair.
In still, in others, reinstall from scratch (fdisk, format, install).

BUT in rare cases, the C drive is totally unbootable.

AND YET THE DATA REMAINS INTACT (as a cable select SECOND DRIVE)

Ok. Is this my imagination? Have I gone bonkers? Windows not booting up but the data is ok?

Is this a new form of virus - is it affecting the boot sector of a C drive, and yet, still letting it be "read access" as cable select ????

Please advise.

ps: when I AM able to get the computer up and running, haven't been able to find a virus that accounts for this behaviour.

A boot issue will not affect the data on the drive. When one cannot get a drive to boot it is often recommended to install as a slave to extract all the data.

There are several options to fix a boot problem. What is the exact behavior? Any error message? What happens?