Another hard drive crash--fixed in just an hour

Today, I came home to see the dreaded “DISK BOOT FAILURE - INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER” notice from Windows XP. This has already happen recently–a little over a month ago. This time though I knew what I was doing.

All my personal data (photos, music, program installation files) are on a separate drive that I then backup every week to an external hard drive. This separates the data from the hard disk that contains the operating system and creates a second copy. Separating the data from the operating system also allows for an easier backup, since the whole drive and be duplicated. I use Retrospect Express that came free with my external hard drive to copy and verify the external drive.

Most likely my master boot sector (MBR) became corrupted and so I told the Windows XP installation CD to install a second copy of Windows. This fixes the master boot sector and allow me to boot into the previous version. Walla! The problem is fixed.

Now if I could only figure out why the hard drive’s master boot sector become corrupted in the first place. My first thoughts were heat, but then why would only the boot sector be corrupted. If you have any ideas, please post them!

-Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

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