Corruption of NTFS Partition while Capturing with VDubMod

[Ahri]

I have a secondary HDD with only one primary partition which is formatted using NTFS, it's 200GB. I used VDubMod to capture some video from my TV card (full spec below) and the resulting file was ~85GB, a bit excessive, but it was my first attempt at capturing a VHS video so I guess I'll use MJPEG next time. I switched my computer off and moved it back up to my usual computer room from the living room, and when I switched it on Windows decided that the whole drive was corrupted and needs formatting; it refuses to scandisk.

What kind of recovery software could I use to get back some (as much as possible) of my data? I'm not willing to just format and start fresh just yet as I have ~8GB of MP3s and can't be bothered ripping my whole collection for a 3rd time, I have some ripped DVDs which take too long to encode so I'd never get around to ripping them again ;) and I have a bunch of fan movies I took aaaages downloading that are kind special to me (1.5GB on a 56k evenings and weekends only net connection; I can be patient at times ;))

My spec:

Windows 2000 SP4
VDubMod 1.5.10.1 (build 2366/release)
Latest ATI drivers downloaded yesterday
DirextX9.0b w/TV Tuner Patch

Shuttle SNG45 (Shuttle FN45 Motherboard)
AMD 3200+XP, 400MHz FSB
2x256MB Corsair Low Latency RAM, 400MHz
Pioneer 107D DVD/CD Burner (Secondary Slave)
80GB Seagate HDD with my Windows partition and a few others (Primary Master)
200GB Maxtor HDD which is where the problem lies (Secondary Master)
Hercules/ATI 9800SE 128MB A-i-W

I hope I chose the right forum to post in! If not, feel free to chuck it elsewhere, mods ;)

[Leak]

I guess you've been bitten by the following "mis-feature" of Windows 2000 when it comes to discs >137GB:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];305098

In short, if you're using a disc greater than 137GB you need to install at least SP3 *AND* add a registry key for Windows to use 48-bit addressing for disc blocks; if you don't do this, it'll wrap around at the 137GB mark and happily start writing from the beginning of the disc, where all the vital filesystem information is.

(My father managed to blow away the data on his then-new 160GB drive thanks to this, but thankfully it wasn't too important... :()

I fear there's not much you can do, since Windows keeps all vital FS info in the Master File Table at the beginning of the disc, and once you fill it up enough so that a file crosses the magic 2^32 block line you'll trash the file system.

np: Latyrx - The Quickening (The Wreckoning Part II) (The Album)

[Ahri]

I'm currently banging the desk with my head :( Thank you very much for the help, I really appreciate it. I've downloaded a couple of disk recovery shareware apps in the desperate hope of getting back some of the stuff, but as they're shareware I doubt they'll be of much help.

Time to patch my registry and consider formatting, cheers for the URL.

Oh and..... D'Oh :D