OK I will try to keep the saga brief. The PC is a:
Dell Dimension 9100
Windows XP Pro SP2
160 GB Seagate drives set to Raid 1 with the Bios


The PC was booting when city power went out. Since then the PC has not booted successfully from the hard drives with a Ntfs.sys file missing or corrupt. I can boot with a Dell WinXP Pro SP2 boot disk. I have tried replacing the ntfs.sys file with no change. Replacing the memory does not help either.

I ran checkdisk /r and recovered half a dozen files. The hard disks passed the hard disk test on the boot CD. I am in the process of running the diagnostic utility on the boot CD for the memory and hard disks. It has passed the memory tests as I write.

At this point it appears I either have a corrupted Windows install or a bad hardisk. Regardless I would like to backup my data before I proceed as I have been a bad boy about backups.

I was thinking I would break the mirrored set and do the rebuild on one drive. Could I then recover the data from the other drive before remirroring?

From the boot CD all the directories, except Windows, on the C:\ drive give me an Access Denied error? This is true for a change directory or a copy command. Will this be the same after I rebuild?!

Does anyone have any better ideas or suggestions? I thought of a 3rd drive but I cannot copy without the rebuild.

There is a way to install Windows XP on a new folder (So instead of C:\Windows it will be on another Windows folder)

I'll paste the instructions later on today...

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