Matt wrote:
> Background:
> I had a home-built PC with a Maxtor 250GB HD running Win XP. Worked
> fine for almost 2 years now. The other day I decided to try and install
> SuSE Linux on a Seagate 10GB HD that I put in as the slave. Ran through
> the install and made sure to do it to the Seagate drive and not the
> Maxtor. Restarted the computer and now I get the "Error Loading OS"
> error.
> If I pull the Seagate drive out and boot I get the same error. Tried
> putting the Maxtor drive in as a primary on another computer and get
> "Error Loading OS" again. Now Im almost positive the Linux install
> didnt format the Maxtor drive but when I put in a WinXP CD and boot to
> the repair console, trying to navigate around the C drive just leads to
> a "Please insert a disk into Drive C" as if it were a cd drive or
> something similar.
> What I think happend, although Im not entirely familiar with how Linux
> affects the Boot Sector, is that the Linux install changed the boot
> sector on my Primary HD (Maxtor) to try and boot linux and now I cant
> boot windows. However, when I installed the Maxtor initially I put on a
> Dynamic Drive Overlay to boot to the drive (I believe that was because
> the drive was bigger than 137GB) and I cannot install that without
> formatting the HD.

When you put Maxtor's DDO, it re-wrote the drive's MBR to include a
substitute BIOS, which it put on the drives first track. This BIOS
allows for use of drives larger than 137GB. (Actually 128GB.)

When you installed Linux you let it install its boot-loader in the MBR
of the drive. This overwrote the Maxtor DDO.

> I would like to be able to restore the Maxtor drive to its original
> state but I realize that could be asking for a miracle. So at the very
> least recovering some files would be great.

Check the Maxtor site. At one time they had a program to re-install
their Dynamic Drive Overlay. Using fdisk /mbr will recover a normal
MBR, but it will not work on a drive using DDO. Don't try it!

There are many programs that will recover data from a drive with a bad
MBR. For now, do not try to access that drive directly. Put it as a
second drive in another system, and copy the files to a known good drive.

Good luck!

--
Virg Wall, P.E.