Harddrive recovery

[Jethro]

Hello everyone,

First of all, I don't know if I am in the right group here, someone
else pointed me in this direction.

I have a problem with one of my harddrives which I will try to explain
here:
I have 2 harddrives in my pc 1 is the system harddrive on which my OS
(win2k) is installed. The second one is a harddrive for all my other
things, the size is 80Gb. That harddrive containt 4 partitions of
somewhere arround 20Gb each. This second harddrive is the problem.
Something went terribly wrong during a crash and now Windows says the
drive is 'unformatted'. The partitions are no longer viewable.
In the bios the size of the harddrive isn't correct. The actual size
is 80Gb but the bios says somewhere arround 31Gb.
With EasyRecovery Pro I managed to get a little more information which
have shown that, from the 31Gb, 1 partition (of 20Gb) is still intact
and I am able to recover all the data on that partition. The rest of
the space is 'unindentified'.
I also have a logfile of partition magic, you can view it here:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~bjborsje/diskinfo.txt.
My feeling is that all the data is on the harddrive, but that somehow
the partition tables are messed up. I hope there is a way to make this
all work again.

I hope I'm not bothering anyone with this post, it just that I'm a
total dummie if it comes to this kind of complicated problems. I'm
just very worried that I might not be able to get to my other
partitions.

 

[Markus]

as far as i can see from the logfile the total drive size seems to be the
main problem.
i think the first problem should either be the recognition of the drive in
bios (as 80GB) or to disable the drive in bios completely and try again
under xp/2000, as they use special drivers to access the hdd and do not need
bios recognition. you could also use ibm dft and see what it displays, you
dont need bios recognition there either. as far as i can see from the
logfile the total drive size seems to be the main problem.

 

[Svend Olaf Mikkelsen]

In the bios the size of the harddrive isn't correct. The actual size
is 80Gb but the bios says somewhere arround 31Gb.

The disk is set to 32 GB using jumpers or software. You have to
correct that problem.

If the BIOS does not support 80 GB disks, you have to take that into
consideration when solving the problem.

 

[Zvi Netiv]

Hello everyone,

First of all, I don't know if I am in the right group here, someone
else pointed me in this direction.

I have a problem with one of my harddrives which I will try to explain
here:
I have 2 harddrives in my pc 1 is the system harddrive on which my OS
(win2k) is installed. The second one is a harddrive for all my other
things, the size is 80Gb. That harddrive containt 4 partitions of
somewhere arround 20Gb each. This second harddrive is the problem.
Something went terribly wrong during a crash and now Windows says the
drive is 'unformatted'. The partitions are no longer viewable.
In the bios the size of the harddrive isn't correct. The actual size
is 80Gb but the bios says somewhere arround 31Gb.
With EasyRecovery Pro I managed to get a little more information which
have shown that, from the 31Gb, 1 partition (of 20Gb) is still intact
and I am able to recover all the data on that partition. The rest of
the space is 'unindentified'.
I also have a logfile of partition magic, you can view it here:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~bjborsje/diskinfo.txt.
My feeling is that all the data is on the harddrive, but that somehow
the partition tables are messed up. I hope there is a way to make this
all work again.

The problem lies here:

=======================================================================
Partition Information for Disk 2: 32,247.7 Megabytes
Volume PartType Status Size MB PartSect # StartSect TotalSects
=======================================================================
Type 42 Pri 32,247.7 0 0 0 66,043,215

Seems that the drive not being recognized as 80 GB is caused by the bad
partition table in the MBR and the drive setting in the setup being on AUTO.
You could try the following procedure:

Download RESQ from http://resq.co.il/resq.php and prepare the rescue floppy by
running the download file on a PC that runs under Win98. If you have no access
to such PC then prepare the FreeDOS boot floppy from our site by aid of
MakeResQ, from http://resq.co.il/resq.php

Boot the problem PC from the floppy made, then from the A: prompt and the RESQ
floppy, run RESQDISK /KILL /2

This will put zeros in the partition table of the second drive without affecting
anything else. Reboot the PC from the floppy and see if the BIOS now detects
the drive with the correct size.

From the A: drive, run now RESQDISK /ASSESS /2

RESQDISK will scan the second drive for partitions and configuration data and
will prepare a report named A:\RESQDISK.RPT (leave the floppy write enabled to
save the report). Post the report here (it's a plain text file) and I should be
able to instruct how to complete the recovery.

Regards, Zvi

 

[Zvi Netiv]

The problem lies here:


Seems that the drive not being recognized as 80 GB is caused by the bad
partition table in the MBR and the drive setting in the setup being on AUTO.
You could try the following procedure:

Download RESQ from http://resq.co.il/resq.php and prepare the rescue floppy by
running the download file on a PC that runs under Win98. If you have no access
to such PC then prepare the FreeDOS boot floppy from our site by aid of
MakeResQ, from http://resq.co.il/resq.php

Sorry, bad link: should be http://http://resq.co.il/iv_tools.php

Boot the problem PC from the floppy made, then from the A: prompt and the RESQ
floppy, run RESQDISK /KILL /2

This will put zeros in the partition table of the second drive without affecting
anything else. Reboot the PC from the floppy and see if the BIOS now detects
the drive with the correct size.

From the A: drive, run now RESQDISK /ASSESS /2

RESQDISK will scan the second drive for partitions and configuration data and
will prepare a report named A:\RESQDISK.RPT (leave the floppy write enabled to
save the report). Post the report here (it's a plain text file) and I should be
able to instruct how to complete the recovery.

Regards, Zvi

 

[DrSardonic]

I had a similar problem on 2 drives at once. Windows did no recognize the
drives anymore. I used EZ Recovery Pro and it worked great. It got the
data back intact in total!

 

[Joep]

I had a similar problem on 2 drives at once. Windows did no recognize the
drives anymore. I used EZ Recovery Pro and it worked great. It got the
data back intact in total!

Windows not recognizing a drive is often a minor problem while 99.999999%
of the system structures remains intact ... It is those 'Easy' problems
'Easy'Recovery handles well.

Joep

--
D I Y D a t a R e c o v e r y . N L - Data & Disaster Recovery Tools

http://www.diydatarecovery.nl
http://www.diydatarecovery.com

Please include previous correspondence!

DiskPatch - MBR, Partition, boot sector repair and recovery.
iRecover - FAT, FAT32 and NTFS data recovery.
MBRtool - Freeware MBR backup and restore.

 

[Joep]

One minor thingie ... somehow the partition tables now describe a 'Dynamic
Disk' (type 42h). So is the OP aware of that, was he or wasn't he using a
Dynamic Disk?

Joep

--
D I Y D a t a R e c o v e r y . N L - Data & Disaster Recovery Tools

http://www.diydatarecovery.nl
http://www.diydatarecovery.com

Please include previous correspondence!

DiskPatch - MBR, Partition, boot sector repair and recovery.
iRecover - FAT, FAT32 and NTFS data recovery.
MBRtool - Freeware MBR backup and restore.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Windows not recognizing a drive is often a minor problem while 99.999999%
of the system structures remains intact ... It is those 'Easy' problems
'Easy'Recovery handles well.

Broodnijd, van der Steen?

AFAICT, that is what most utilities require to actually be
able to restore a volume to recognition and workability.

Several utilities do not even attempt to do that. They only allow
you to backup files and then make you repartition/reformat.

 

[Joep]

Broodnijd, van der Steen?
Neuhh ... niet echt hoor ;-)

 

[Zvi Netiv]

just for te record:
The first HD contains 2 partions, the C-drive voor Windows and a
D-drive.
After that there are 2 CDR's (E-drive and F-drive). The G-drive is the
drive which is corrupted.

C, D, etc., are *logical* drives, while RESQDISK deals with *physical* hard
drives, which are numbered 1, 2 ... (FDISK notation). Try FDISK /STATUS when
booted from the RESQ floppy and you'll see what I mean.

BTW, if you already downloaded RESQ, then download it again as I made some
refinements to RESQDISK last night, to provide a more thorough examination of
the drive in its "assess" mode.

I don't know where the _/2_ is about, but is this stille correct in
the situations as described above?

The "/2" argument instructs RESQDISK to operate on physical drive #2, which is
the corrupted one as I understand. If you want to be sure you don't make any
mistakes, then disconnect both the data and power cables from the first drive
(the good one) and leave just the problem drive connected. That will make it
drive #1 and you can then operate on it with RESQDISK, without the /2 argument.

Important: Run the /KILL command just *once*. The reason is that this
operation automatically backs up the current MBR to the last sector of track 0,
in case there is need to go back to the current state. If you run the command
twice, then the new MBR with the empty partition table will overwrite the
backup. Not a tragedy, but still ...

Lastly, note the post from Joep, in this thread. Joep notes that the partition
type of the problem drive is now that of 'Dynamic Drive'. Do you have any idea
how this came about? Do you remember converting the drive to Dynamic Disk?

Regards, Zvi

 

[Jethro]

BTW, if you already downloaded RESQ, then download it again as I made some

refinements to RESQDISK last night, to provide a more thorough examination of
the drive in its "assess" mode.

Oke, I will to the entire process again with the new version.

Lastly, note the post from Joep, in this thread. Joep notes that the partition
type of the problem drive is now that of 'Dynamic Drive'. Do you have any idea
how this came about? Do you remember converting the drive to Dynamic Disk?

I'm not sure what is ment with "Dynamic Disk"? I'm sorry, but I'm a
real dummie at this part of pc's.

 

[Zvi Netiv]

This didn't happen, the size in the bios stays arround 33Gb.
Isn't is possible that the bios is the problem, perhaps it isn't able
to work with large hard drives?

I don't think there is a problem with the BIOS, since it worked before, but the
drive capacity was accidentally changed and limited to 32 GB, as suggested in
Svend's post in this thread. Before restoring the partition table, which is
fairly straightforward, then you need first to reset the drive to its correct
max capacity. The best would be to wait for Svend's instructions how to do that
with his tool.

you will find the file here:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~bjborsje/RESQDISK.RPT.txt

Section of the report:

Evaluation Copy *************************************** CHS mode W9x
******************* * R e s Q d i s k 550 * ********************
* Hard Disk Rescue and Recovery *
Disk 1 * * Copyright (c) '90-03 NetZ Computing * SeeThru *
ExtBIOS * * Virus Control, Disk & Data Recovery * OFF F9 *
********* *************************************** *********
AltHelp *
*********
^2:FAT-16*
CHS address: Cyl 0 Head 1 Sector 1
******************** Boot Sector Data FAT-32 *********************
* *
* Sectors per Cluster: 32 *
* Number of Heads: 255 *
* Sectors in Partition: 40960000 *
* Sectors per FAT Copy: 9996 *
* Reserved Sectors: 32 *
* Capacity in Kilobytes: 20971520 *
* *
********** Press Alt+P to analyze as partition sector ************
Disk 1, Master Partition Sector, F6 for Layout


Evaluation Copy *************************************** Extended W9x
******************* * R e s Q d i s k 550 * ********************
* Hard Disk Rescue and Recovery *
Disk 1 * * Copyright (c) '90-03 NetZ Computing * SeeThru *
ExtBIOS * * Virus Control, Disk & Data Recovery * OFF F9 *
********* *************************************** *********
AltHelp *
*********
^2:FAT-16*
Checking cylinder 0 for FAT pair
******************************************************************
* Press Space to pause, Esc to stop searching *
* -------------------------------------------------------------- *
* First FAT-32 copy starts on sector 95, Cyl 0 *
* Second FAT-32 copy starts on sector 10091, Cyl 0 *
* Sectors per FAT copy: 9996 *
* *
* *
* *
******************************************************************
Searching for existing FAT partitions on drive 1


The report confirms what we already know, that the max capacity has been limited
to 32 GB. It also confirms that the first partition is FAT-32, is consistent
(the boot sector data and the FAT match), which is good. What bothers me is
that the report should have shown a second FAT pair, as well as an extended
partition and boot sector pair at cylinder 2550 (there should have been
additional screen snapshots after the above). Seems that you aborted the
'assess' test prematurely by repeatedly pressing Esc.

Another problem occured, because now the drive became invisible in
windows 2000.

Naturally, because we zeroed the partition table. The partitions will resurface
after we rebuild the MBR, but this can be done only after the max capacity of
the drive is restored. I'll leave it to Svend to guide you how to use his tool
for the purpose.

Another run of RESQDISK /ASSESS after the max size has been corrected will
provide the details how to RESQDISK /REBUILD, to restore the correct parameters
into the MBR.

Regards, Zvi

 

[Jethro]

Svend helped me auto trough e-mail and now everything is working again.
Thanks again Sven!!