Hi, I recently ran an image backup of my hard drive using Runtime Software's DriveImage XML (heard about it on pcworld.com).

I did this because one way or another, I damaged my Windows XP install (and maybe my disk itself... not entirely sure about that), and certain services (windows INSTALLER, system restore, some networking) just refused to start or cooperate.

Since I had my OS and personal data on one partition, I figured I'd back up the entire HDD, wipe it CLEAN, reinstall XP, then restore my back up to a separate partition, but this time, only copy over some things i need to keep (My DOCS, Music, etc.).

The problem is, when i restore my back up using DriveImage, the data is unreadable by XP. First, it gave me an 'access denied' error when i tried to open the partition i restored my backup to. On the second TRY, it tells me this partition is formatted as the RAW filesystem, and nothing can be done to it. However, when i look at the backup in progress, the window informs me in real time what files are being restored, and i see all my documents. Im sure the backup is healthy in some way, but possibly due to my failing hard drive at time of backup it is not going as smoothly as it should be.

Any help is appreciated! I really need my files back. Thanks!Try booting from a GParted CD - it might give you more information about the partition.  Might even do a better job of ACCESSING the files than XP does.Actually, I've been a fan of the Gparted CD for quite some time now. However, I'm not really familiar enough with Lunix to make any use of it other than resizing/editing partitions. One thing it did tell me was that, after to my first image backup of my HDD, there were physical errors on the disk, and before i could do anything to my main partition, i had to run chkdsk from Windows to fix the errors on the disk. After that, it worked fine and gladly resized my partitions. But, i learned that i ran teh image backup prior to fixing these errors. Is this of any significance to restoring the backup?Probably.  You can't expect the image to restore completely satisfactorily.  Try it.