[corrupted MBR] Any tool to recover lost partitions booting from a floppy?

[Peltio]

Synopsis:
My system froze during an antivirus scan, a BSOD appeared stating that it
was impossibile writing to C:
Next boot froze at the DMI pool thingy.
Booting from floppy I could see the disk and many partitions of the same
physical disk. Thinking it could have been an OS problem I tried to hid the
current partition, enabling boot from my second partition, but that wasn't a
bright idea.

Now the partition table is all screwed up: according to Ranish Partition
Manager the first two bootable partitions carry incorrect values, and one
for one of the extended partritions "was not possible to read from boot
record" (or something like that, I'm not very lucid, now : ( )
The remaing ten or so partitions have collapesed in a single 'unused' chunk
of over 110 GB.
There's no way to access any partition of the disk, now.

Problem is: if I try to boot from my second HD with the corrupted disk still
attached (with master/slave jumpers correctly set), I cannot even reach the
desktop, and at the next boot without the corrupted disk I have to reinstall
the graphic card drivers. What the...?

Anyone can suggest a tool to either recovery the lost partition structure,
or a way to recover part of the files without having to boot from a second
hard disk?
A tool booting from floppy would be fine. Better yet a tool that would not
attempt to write to HD (like the late Lost and Found).
I'd like to recover the... er... ok, here it goes: I'd like to recover the
partition table data I forgot on the disk.

Any takers?

regards,
Peltio
I was completing the recovery from the physical death of a 80 GB disk, so I
did not save the latest data I produced while I was still restoring past
data : (

 

[Peltio]

Forgot to add: the HD is a 120 GB Samsung spinpoint (parallel interface)
The OS is Win98SE
The user is shattered.

regards,
Peltio

 

[Joep]

Anyone can suggest a tool to either recovery the lost partition structure,

DiskPatch 2.0 for partition table repair and more from:
www.diydatarecovery.nl or www.diskpatch.com.

 

[Zvi Netiv]

Forgot to add: the HD is a 120 GB Samsung spinpoint (parallel interface)
The OS is Win98SE
The user is shattered.

There are several tools that can restore access to your partitions. Joep
offered a couple, you could also try RESQDISK from www.resq.co.il/resq.php

Question: Was there a boot condition for which you could see all ten partitions
on the drive? Out of curiosity, why did you create so many?

Regards, Zvi

 

[Peltio]

There are several tools that can restore access to your partitions. Joep
offered a couple, you could also try RESQDISK from www.resq.co.il/resq.php

Thanks to both of you.
Following the advice from another NG I am now on my way to attempt a disk
repair from a bootable linux CD, using testdisk. I will probably buy a brand
new HD to make a disk to disk copy with dd before writing anything to the
damaged disk.
Should I not succeed in recovering my data in this way I will give a try to
one of the commercial solutions suggested.

Question: Was there a boot condition for which you could see all ten partitions
on the drive?

Yes, after I got the error message in Windows saying that it was not
possible to write to C I rebooted and when faced with a blinking cursor
(actually the screen froze at the 'verify DMI pool' line) I thought it would
have been better to reboot from floppy. Ranish Partition Manager showed the
whole set of partitions (and -silly me- I did not think to save the
partition table back then, because I thought that booting from the second
partition would have been safe [1])
So I made the second partition bootable and when the other OS booted it
started that darn scandisk program that, probably, worsened the problem.
I guess that now I have a copy of the already corrupted partition table on
disk, so it's no use trying to go back to that.

Out of curiosity, why did you create so many?

Ten are 'many'? Counting those on the other two disks my DVD letter was X
: )))

I like to keep things nicely separated: The OS here, the OS data there,
highly fragmented data (such as TEMP and temporary internet files, mail and
news data) in another place, programs of one kind somewhere else, documents
on another drive, backups on still another and so on.
In this way I end up defragmenting only the temporary files disk, and the OS
disk.
Problem is that I was still recovering from the physical loss of my previous
HD (an IBM gone to data heaven) and I still had my documents only on the
drive that is now spoiled (part of the mail and work done since the previous
disaster was still awaiting for the periodic backup). Nothing really vital
has been lost: a couple of weeks of work, the final result of which was
already on another computer (not the intermediate steps, alas). But I spent
several days in custominzing the system, the folders, the files, the links,
the programs, let aside everything I had downloaded from the net in the
meantime.

I consider this wreckage a sign. It was high time I moved to Linux. Now I
have a bootable CD. Nexy step is Mepis, then... we'll see.

regards,
Peltio
partially recovered from the shock

[1] Funny how stupid one can be, uh? I guess it's the same mechanism that
makes one struggle while sinking in the quicksand.

 

[Zvi Netiv]

Thanks to both of you.
Following the advice from another NG I am now on my way to attempt a disk
repair from a bootable linux CD, using testdisk. I will probably buy a brand
new HD to make a disk to disk copy with dd before writing anything to the
damaged disk.
Should I not succeed in recovering my data in this way I will give a try to
one of the commercial solutions suggested.


Yes, after I got the error message in Windows saying that it was not
possible to write to C

This could be a sign that the disk is developing bad sectors in a critical area.

I rebooted and when faced with a blinking cursor
(actually the screen froze at the 'verify DMI pool' line) I thought it would
have been better to reboot from floppy. Ranish Partition Manager showed the
whole set of partitions (and -silly me- I did not think to save the
partition table back then, because I thought that booting from the second
partition would have been safe [1])
So I made the second partition bootable and when the other OS booted it
started that darn scandisk program that, probably, worsened the problem.

This is a common mistake many users do. Scandisk should not be let to repair
anything before you have an idea of the nature of the problem and its extent.
You should run Scandisk from command line with the /CHECKONLY argument. If the
problem is extensive, then Scandisk is NOT the tool to fix it. The fact that
Scandisk intervened on the next boot supports my suspicion that the disk has bad
sectors and could be dying.

I guess that now I have a copy of the already corrupted partition table on
disk, so it's no use trying to go back to that.

The correct thing to do when such condition develops is a QUICK surface check
with a diagnostic tool, to verify if there really is a problem. The time the
drive is under power, if bad sectors are developing, is of prime importance as
the deterioration can be very rapid once it has started. If the data is
important and you don't want losing it then the next thing to do is to clone the
drive, sector for sector, and finish the recovery on the clone.

Ten are 'many'? Counting those on the other two disks my DVD letter was X
: )))

From a recovery standpoint, having several partitions is an advantage, as the
corruption of the file system in one partition won't affect the others.

I like to keep things nicely separated: The OS here, the OS data there,
highly fragmented data (such as TEMP and temporary internet files, mail and
news data) in another place, programs of one kind somewhere else, documents
on another drive, backups on still another and so on.
In this way I end up defragmenting only the temporary files disk, and the OS
disk.
Problem is that I was still recovering from the physical loss of my previous
HD (an IBM gone to data heaven) and I still had my documents only on the
drive that is now spoiled (part of the mail and work done since the previous
disaster was still awaiting for the periodic backup). Nothing really vital
has been lost: a couple of weeks of work, the final result of which was
already on another computer (not the intermediate steps, alas). But I spent
several days in custominzing the system, the folders, the files, the links,
the programs, let aside everything I had downloaded from the net in the
meantime.

I consider this wreckage a sign. It was high time I moved to Linux. Now I
have a bootable CD. Nexy step is Mepis, then... we'll see.

Do you think that drives running under Linux do crash less? That's new to me.
;-)

If your drive isn't in too bad shape already, and if my suspicion is correct,
then the best course of action would be to clone the entire drive to a new one,
same capacity, and continue the recovery on the clone. Take a look at CloneDisk
at www.resq.co.il/resq.php and read www.resq.co.il/recover.php (last part of the
paper).

Regards, Zvi

Peltio
partially recovered from the shock

[1] Funny how stupid one can be, uh? I guess it's the same mechanism that
makes one struggle while sinking in the quicksand.