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"Possible Hard Drive crash?"

Just quickly, if Windows (98SE) starts telling me that it can't find a partition on the hard drive, and can perform a scandisk in 2 seconds flat, does that sound like the drive has died, and lost everything?

Currently, my keyword selections into Google aren't getting me very far.

Thanks.

Just quickly, if Windows (98SE) starts telling me that it can't find a partition on the hard drive, and can perform a scandisk in 2 seconds flat, does that sound like the drive has died, and lost everything?

Currently, my keyword selections into Google aren't getting me very far.

Thanks.

Am I right in assuming it doesn't boot into windows?

Yes, sorry, Windows won't boot up at all.

The system gets up to the screen which scans each drive for a disk before booting (a:\ d:\ e:\), but rather than boot to Windows from this point, it tells me there is a boot error, and waits for a boot disk to be entered. When I pop in the floppy boot disk, I get the message that Windows cannot find a partition, and so cannot boot.

Running the scandisk app from the floppy disk will perform a scan in a second or two, and claim the c:\ drive is fine, which I'm sure isn't correct; as a scan would surly take a hell of a lot longer.

I'm not to sure if re-installing Windows would just overwrite the old Windows file, keeping the other stuff intact (as has been the case before), but then I have done this previously, I haven't been asked / told to partition the drive first, which makes me think the drive has lost the partition, and so lost the data, but wanted to ask before simply formatting and whipping the data if it is in fact accessible in some manor.

You might be able to access it using Bart PE.

[URL]http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/[/URL]

You should then be able to see if the data is recoverable or atleast viewable.