stam

Thanks both, Pardon my ignorance on most the technical details - Not sure about the boot mode - i just hit F8 and it launches a diagnostic program which concludes it can't repair the disk and launch DOS shell from the advanced screen there. Not sure if that's BIOS or UEFI or something else. I suspect you're right - the disk is probably dead. It also seems unlikely i'll be able to quickly salvage files from the disk and will have get a new disk etc. I'll follow your advice about cloning the drive and using DMDE but unlikely to report back quickly as I have limited time to dedicate to this... Thanks for the advice, will post update if any further changes... S.

Another error: I finally was able to launch from Win 10 install disk after choosing to re-install Win 10 (keep my own files). However, it won't allow me to install as it says there are zero bytes free and the drive is not bootable (in spite the opposite being reported in PARTDISK> Attrib vol)

Both of the CD commands just take me to X: \Windows> DIR C: gives me the message: "Volume in drive C is System Reserved", followed by the volume serial number DIR E: lists the top level of my Hard Drive (including E:\Windows, E:\Users, E:\Program Files etc) however, listing subdirectories (e.g. DIR E:\Users) failed with a 'File Not Found' error... Bizarre situation as CHKDSK insists this is a RAW drive, but i can DIR it and DISKPART tells me it's formatted as NTFS .

thanks for the response - apologies if my post didn't make sense, very little of this problem makes sense to me... attached is a screenshot of the DISKPART>list vol which probably explains it better than i can. vol 2 (e:) corresponds to my hard drive. CHKDSK e: /f/r/x fails as it sees this as a RAW format, even though (as per screenshot) it's listed as NTFS... BOOTREC /RebuildBcd fails instantly as well as it can't find a volume with a Windows installation sfc /scannow /OFFBOOTDIR=e:\ /OFFWINDIR=e:\Windows (also fails instantly - "Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation.") This is pretty much the ceiling of my current knowledge so any advice appreciated... I've downloaded Win 10 from MS and am burning DVD as we speak - however i'm not confident that this will take me further in saving rather important data on the drive...

After an unattended update, i found my win 10 box dead - it tries to run a diagnostic endlessly on boot. After about an hour i'm given the opportunity to run a DOS shell and but can't get far... in DiskPart > List vol, I seem to have now developed an extra partition at c: labelled 'windows rese', 100 Mb in size. My original 2 Tb volume is listed as e: (NTFS format) and DiskPart reports this as a normal/healthy partition. however running CHKDSK (with all the options) fails as it reports the partition to be RAW format, not NTFS as Found some advice online and tried BOOTREC but that all fails as it can't find a windows volume and sfc/scannow fails as well (having set the volume to e: and the win directory to e:/windows). I've not doubt there are bad sectors causing this but sadly haven't backed up the drive (i'll learn one day...) and was hoping to back up the stuff before getting a new drive. very very grateful for any suggestions?