NTFS boot sector is the first sector of an NTFS based hard drive that contains vital information needed by your computer system to start the operating system. Although the NTFS boot sector is less prone to corruption or damage, corruption or damage can still occur. Two serious problems that you might encounter after NTFS boot sector corruption are unmountable hard drive volumes and inaccessibility of data. To overcome NTFS boot sector corruption issues, all you need to do is search the backup copy of the sector, and then overwrite the primary boot sector using that copy. However, if you are unable to find the backup copy or the backup copy itself has been corrupted, then you will need to reinstall Windows operating system. A clean reinstall of Windows erases all the data stored in your hard drive. For complete recovery of lost data after formatting, you will need to use advanced Data Recovery Software.

Consider a practical case, where you encounter any of the below error messages after your NTFS boot sector gets corrupted:

“Sector not Found”

Or

“Windows NT could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt <%SYSTEMROOT%>\SYSTEM32\NTOSKRNL.EXE”

Or

“STOP: C000021A (FATAL SYSTEM ERROR)”

Or

“Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\drivers\ntfs.sys”

Data stored in the NTFS based hard drive partition becomes inaccessible after any of the above error message appears.

Cause:

NTFS boot sector corruption. The corruption primarily occurs due to dirty system shutdown, operating system malfunction, virus attacks, and more.

Resolution:

To resolve the described computer system behavior, you will need to follow the below measures: Run CHKDSK/r command. Try running Windows Repair using Windows boot CD.

However, if both the above measure fail to perform, and you have not maintained any data backup, then you will need to use advanced Data Recovery Software to recover your lost data. Such ntfs data recovery tools use high-end scanning algorithms to search and recover all your lost files and folders. Built with highly graphical user-interface, these data recovery software restore the recoverable files at your desired location.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is a powerful recovery tool to provide systematic Data Recovery from Windows 7 RC1, Vista, XP, 2003, and 2000 based systems. Embedded with advanced drive features like Drive Status, Disk Cloning, Disk Imaging and more, the software supports FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file system drives.