Part of new hard disk has 'disappeared' - access only to about hal

[Roy Alastair]

I bought new larger HDD for laptop (WIN XP Home, Dell Inspiron) as old one
was becoming full. Rather than reload from OEM CDs, update to Serv Pack 3 etc
and load all softwatre, tried to save a lot of time by using freeware to
clone existing disk - as I accept, at own risk! On restart, blue screen of
death! Have resolved that, but now only about 73GB of 160GB drive is visible
and formattable. Linux-based cloning program running from bootable CD, used
again to tackle BSOD problem, produced error messages reporting other
inaccessible partitions 'with unsupported flags'.
Have I terminally ruined it, or is there any way of scrubbing the entire HDD
back to 'as new' state and starting again (in which case this time I'll do it
via a full clean install etc, however long it takes)? I strongly suspect
that I have corrupted the MBR, and perhaps especially the Volume Bytes
forming part of the MBR in sector 0. Have used other internet -derived
software to wipe sector 0, but that has not revealed the invisible parts of
the HDD. It seems unlikely that the HDD has suffered physical damage, and I
remain hopeful this is a software issue rather than broken hardware.

V grateful for any thoughts from those less ignorant than me!

 

[Pegasus [MVP]]

I bought new larger HDD for laptop (WIN XP Home, Dell Inspiron) as old one
was becoming full. Rather than reload from OEM CDs, update to Serv Pack 3
etc
and load all softwatre, tried to save a lot of time by using freeware to
clone existing disk - as I accept, at own risk! On restart, blue screen
of
death! Have resolved that, but now only about 73GB of 160GB drive is
visible
and formattable. Linux-based cloning program running from bootable CD,
used
again to tackle BSOD problem, produced error messages reporting other
inaccessible partitions 'with unsupported flags'.
Have I terminally ruined it, or is there any way of scrubbing the entire
HDD
back to 'as new' state and starting again (in which case this time I'll do
it
via a full clean install etc, however long it takes)? I strongly suspect
that I have corrupted the MBR, and perhaps especially the Volume Bytes
forming part of the MBR in sector 0. Have used other internet -derived
software to wipe sector 0, but that has not revealed the invisible parts
of
the HDD. It seems unlikely that the HDD has suffered physical damage, and
I
remain hopeful this is a software issue rather than broken hardware.

V grateful for any thoughts from those less ignorant than me!

Is the old disk still intact and bootable?

 

[BillW50]

In Roy Alastair typed on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:56:01 -0700:

I bought new larger HDD for laptop (WIN XP Home, Dell Inspiron) as
old one was becoming full. Rather than reload from OEM CDs, update to
Serv Pack 3 etc and load all softwatre, tried to save a lot of time
by using freeware to clone existing disk - as I accept, at own risk!
On restart, blue screen of death! Have resolved that, but now only
about 73GB of 160GB drive is visible and formattable. Linux-based
cloning program running from bootable CD, used again to tackle BSOD
problem, produced error messages reporting other inaccessible
partitions 'with unsupported flags'.
Have I terminally ruined it, or is there any way of scrubbing the
entire HDD back to 'as new' state and starting again (in which case
this time I'll do it via a full clean install etc, however long it
takes)? I strongly suspect that I have corrupted the MBR, and
perhaps especially the Volume Bytes forming part of the MBR in sector
0. Have used other internet -derived software to wipe sector 0, but
that has not revealed the invisible parts of the HDD. It seems
unlikely that the HDD has suffered physical damage, and I remain
hopeful this is a software issue rather than broken hardware.

V grateful for any thoughts from those less ignorant than me!

No your new drive should be just fine. Is either drive a WD or a
Seagate? If so, you can download Acronis True Image for free to make a
useable clone image. And btw, letting Linux to do things to a Windows
drive is usually a big mistake. I guess you are learning this too. There
are other free programs that can do this in Windows too.

Acronis True Image (has a 15 day trial version available)
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

Acronis True Image Seagate Edition (DiscWizard)
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard

Acronis True Image WD Edition
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&type=download&wdc_lang=en

Paragon DriveBackup Express 9 (free)
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/

 

[Paul]

I bought new larger HDD for laptop (WIN XP Home, Dell Inspiron) as old one
was becoming full. Rather than reload from OEM CDs, update to Serv Pack 3 etc
and load all softwatre, tried to save a lot of time by using freeware to
clone existing disk - as I accept, at own risk! On restart, blue screen of
death! Have resolved that, but now only about 73GB of 160GB drive is visible
and formattable. Linux-based cloning program running from bootable CD, used
again to tackle BSOD problem, produced error messages reporting other
inaccessible partitions 'with unsupported flags'.
Have I terminally ruined it, or is there any way of scrubbing the entire HDD
back to 'as new' state and starting again (in which case this time I'll do it
via a full clean install etc, however long it takes)? I strongly suspect
that I have corrupted the MBR, and perhaps especially the Volume Bytes
forming part of the MBR in sector 0. Have used other internet -derived
software to wipe sector 0, but that has not revealed the invisible parts of
the HDD. It seems unlikely that the HDD has suffered physical damage, and I
remain hopeful this is a software issue rather than broken hardware.

V grateful for any thoughts from those less ignorant than me!

As Pegasus asks, the most important part, is whether the original disk is OK.

This is a partial picture of your disk (just the bits that I've had
bad experiences with).

-----------------------------------------------------+//+--------------+-----------+
Master Boot Record Primary four Partitions Signature| | Boot Sector | Rest of |
<-- 446 bytes --> <----- 64 bytes -----> 0xAA55 | | | C: |
-----------------------------------------------------+//+--------------+-----------+

<-------------------- sector zero -------------------> <----- C: partition ------->

If you have your Linux disc, open a "terminal" window, and do this. This would
erase the MBR on disk hdb. Multiplying bs*count, tells you how much erasing it
is going to do. In this case, a total of 512 bytes of erasing.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb bs=512 count=1

Sudo is only needed, if you're not logged in as root. If you're root, then don't
put the sudo part. The "if=" is the data source, in this case, a stream of zeros
for erasing stuff. The "of=" is the output target for the command. For example,
my second hard drive is "hdb" in Linux, so of=/dev/hdb is what I use. The Block Size
of 512 bytes, is the size of one sector. The command will process one block (count=1).

You can back up the MBR, by doing this. The "my_mbr.bin" file ends up in the
current working directory.

sudo dd if=/dev/hda of=my_mbr.bin bs=512 count=1

You can restore just the 446 byte executable code part, to another drive later,
like this. I haven't tested this command, and I'm not sure how the dd command
can address sub-sector sized quantities. But I've seen this suggested as a way
to put back just the 446 byte part.

sudo dd if=my_mbr.bin of=/dev/hdb bs=446 count=1

So you can do a few things from Linux, to the MBR.

If you want to erase the whole drive, the "dd" command can do that also.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb

The command runs faster, if you give it a block size. On my 80,026,361,856 byte
disk, I erase it like this. This runs a couple times faster than the previous
command syntax. 290304 * 275664 = 80,026,361,856 bytes. The block size of
290304 is five hundred and sixty seven sectors. I try to keep the block size,
just below 512KB.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb bs=290304 count=275664

If you want another tool to erase a disk, then you can use DBAN.
Be careful! This tool is designed to erase *all* connected disks,
so make sure you know first, what it is going to erase. This tool
can erase 99 disks simultaneously, and in the support forum, a
few people accidentally erased their backup disk. The safest course
of action, is to only have the disk to be erased, connected to
the computer. It looks like there may be ISO9660 versions, which
you can burn to make a bootable CD (using a tool that understands
how to handle an ISO file).

http://www.dban.org

DBAN selection screen.

http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=61951&ssid=39776

With DBAN, use the "quick" option, because any of the fancy
"35 pass" options, will take forever to finish.

I like a mixture of tools, some Windows, some Linux. For example,
this one will show you your partition table entries. This is
a representation of the 64 byte section of sector zero.

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip

The Linux equivalent of the Windows PTEDIT32, is this. Type "p" to print the
current partition table. Then "q" to quit. You'd do this from a
terminal window. I've used this one a lot.

sudo fdisk /dev/hda

HTH,
Paul

 

[Roy Alastair]

In Roy Alastair typed on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:56:01 -0700:

No your new drive should be just fine. Is either drive a WD or a
Seagate? If so, you can download Acronis True Image for free to make a
useable clone image. And btw, letting Linux to do things to a Windows
drive is usually a big mistake. I guess you are learning this too. There
are other free programs that can do this in Windows too.

Acronis True Image (has a 15 day trial version available)
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

Acronis True Image Seagate Edition (DiscWizard)
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard

Acronis True Image WD Edition
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&type=download&wdc_lang=en

Paragon DriveBackup Express 9 (free)
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/

Thanks to Bill. Advice to beware of Linux mixed with Wndows is accepted!
My original Dell drive is Toshiba. new one of which half is inaccessible is
Fujitsu. But before any more cloning attempts I need to discover whether I
can recover the missing half of the new drive - otherwise new drive is
smaller than the old one which is filling up!

 

[Roy Alastair]

Is the old disk still intact and bootable?


Thanks for reply - yes original disk is working fine,all data intact, readily bootable. But it is getting full, and has recently become a bit noisy, so the purpose in trying to clone on to a larger disk was to be able to swap immediately to new disk if it ever went down.

Original disk still has (in addition to C drive with XP , programs and data
on it)a small initial partition (78MB FAT labelled Healthy- EISA
configuration) and a larger one (3.15Gb labelled Healthy - unknown partition)
at end of disk, both presumably part of Dell's 'reload to original as
delivered spec' procedures. But so far as I can see there is no way I cd
apply those measures to the other disk - although another correspondent has
suggested I try reloading orig Dell setup from the OEM disks, which i shall
try when I have time in the next few days.

If this prompts more bright ideas fm you I'd be v grateful. I still think
disk has suffered no physical damage - see my reply to Bill.

Tks again

 

[Roy Alastair]

As Pegasus asks, the most important part, is whether the original disk is OK.

This is a partial picture of your disk (just the bits that I've had
bad experiences with).

-----------------------------------------------------+//+--------------+-----------+
Master Boot Record Primary four Partitions Signature| | Boot Sector | Rest of |
<-- 446 bytes --> <----- 64 bytes -----> 0xAA55 | | | C: |
-----------------------------------------------------+//+--------------+-----------+

<-------------------- sector zero -------------------> <----- C: partition ------->

If you have your Linux disc, open a "terminal" window, and do this. This would
erase the MBR on disk hdb. Multiplying bs*count, tells you how much erasing it
is going to do. In this case, a total of 512 bytes of erasing.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb bs=512 count=1

Sudo is only needed, if you're not logged in as root. If you're root, then don't
put the sudo part. The "if=" is the data source, in this case, a stream of zeros
for erasing stuff. The "of=" is the output target for the command. For example,
my second hard drive is "hdb" in Linux, so of=/dev/hdb is what I use. The Block Size
of 512 bytes, is the size of one sector. The command will process one block (count=1).

You can back up the MBR, by doing this. The "my_mbr.bin" file ends up in the
current working directory.

sudo dd if=/dev/hda of=my_mbr.bin bs=512 count=1

You can restore just the 446 byte executable code part, to another drive later,
like this. I haven't tested this command, and I'm not sure how the dd command
can address sub-sector sized quantities. But I've seen this suggested as a way
to put back just the 446 byte part.

sudo dd if=my_mbr.bin of=/dev/hdb bs=446 count=1

So you can do a few things from Linux, to the MBR.

If you want to erase the whole drive, the "dd" command can do that also.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb

The command runs faster, if you give it a block size. On my 80,026,361,856 byte
disk, I erase it like this. This runs a couple times faster than the previous
command syntax. 290304 * 275664 = 80,026,361,856 bytes. The block size of
290304 is five hundred and sixty seven sectors. I try to keep the block size,
just below 512KB.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb bs=290304 count=275664

If you want another tool to erase a disk, then you can use DBAN.
Be careful! This tool is designed to erase *all* connected disks,
so make sure you know first, what it is going to erase. This tool
can erase 99 disks simultaneously, and in the support forum, a
few people accidentally erased their backup disk. The safest course
of action, is to only have the disk to be erased, connected to
the computer. It looks like there may be ISO9660 versions, which
you can burn to make a bootable CD (using a tool that understands
how to handle an ISO file).

http://www.dban.org

DBAN selection screen.

http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=61951&ssid=39776

With DBAN, use the "quick" option, because any of the fancy
"35 pass" options, will take forever to finish.

I like a mixture of tools, some Windows, some Linux. For example,
this one will show you your partition table entries. This is
a representation of the 64 byte section of sector zero.

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip

The Linux equivalent of the Windows PTEDIT32, is this. Type "p" to print the
current partition table. Then "q" to quit. You'd do this from a
terminal window. I've used this one a lot.

sudo fdisk /dev/hda

HTH,
Paul

Paul - Thanks.

Yr advice cd be a bit beyond me and I shall need time to think about it!
Have also replied to other posts which had helpful suggestions.

I think in principle I can try erasing whole of disk - I can fiti it in the
pc in place of working disk, so no danger to existing data if I erase
everything. using a bootable Linux disk to manage the process. If I am right
in thinking that the disk is physically intact but with corrupted partitions
on it which makes those parts inaccessible, wd your suggestion leave me with
an 'as new' blank drive capable of being fomatted under Windows and then used
to load Win XP and drivers from my OEM diska? If so, I cd prob safely risk
using the Windows based cloning methods which other correspondents have
suggested. But none of those help me unless I can first gain access to the
missing portions (almost cerrtainly two partitions which I had tried to
create - the size matches) which make up more than half of the disk.

Thanks again - I shall ruminate and try to follow your advice on a total
scrub of the disk, if you are able to confirm that my assumptions above are
correct.

 

[Roy Alastair]

Have you attempted to view the drive utilizing the 'Disk Management' feature
under 'Computer Management'? The unused portion of the hard-drive may show
up there as an un-assigned segment. If it appears, you can probably create a
partition and assign a logical drive identifier. You won't be able to extend
your primary partition, but you may be able to utilize the rest of the
hard-drive as an additional 'logical' drive.

Thanks. Have been working via disk management - it was when i opened that
that i discovered half the disk had disappeared. It shows no unassigned
space - just a disk of 72.31 GB when it shd be 160 GB. Error messages
visible in Linux (which whizzed past too fast to copy, record or read)
included something to the effect that there are other partitions on the
disk[no doubt the missing areas] "which cannot be accessed because of
unsupported flags" or something similar. That is what suggests to me that
there is no physical damage to rhe disk.

 

[Pegasus [MVP]]

Original disk still has (in addition to C drive with XP , programs and
data
on it)a small initial partition (78MB FAT labelled Healthy- EISA
configuration) and a larger one (3.15Gb labelled Healthy - unknown
partition)
at end of disk, both presumably part of Dell's 'reload to original as
delivered spec' procedures. But so far as I can see there is no way I cd
apply those measures to the other disk - although another correspondent
has
suggested I try reloading orig Dell setup from the OEM disks, which i
shall
try when I have time in the next few days.

If this prompts more bright ideas fm you I'd be v grateful. I still think
disk has suffered no physical damage - see my reply to Bill.

Tks again

Since your original disk is intact, you can clone it to the new disk as it
is. There are several methods to do this:
a) Use a cloning product such as Acronis TrueImage.
b) Do the job using a Linux boot disk.
c) Do it with Windows.

Here are the steps for option c):
1. Put the nex disk into an external USB case.
2. Partition and format it.
3. Make sure that the first partition is a primary partition and that it is
marked "active".
4. Boot the machine with a Bart PE boot CD.
5. Use robocopy.exe to copy the old disk to the new disk.
6. Swap disks.

Your WinXP installation will now boot normally. You can probably run Steps 4
and 5 with a Linux boot CD but since I have never used this method I cannot
comment on it.

 

[Paul]

Paul - Thanks.

Yr advice cd be a bit beyond me and I shall need time to think about it!
Have also replied to other posts which had helpful suggestions.

I think in principle I can try erasing whole of disk - I can fiti it in the
pc in place of working disk, so no danger to existing data if I erase
everything. using a bootable Linux disk to manage the process. If I am right
in thinking that the disk is physically intact but with corrupted partitions
on it which makes those parts inaccessible, wd your suggestion leave me with
an 'as new' blank drive capable of being fomatted under Windows and then used
to load Win XP and drivers from my OEM diska? If so, I cd prob safely risk
using the Windows based cloning methods which other correspondents have
suggested. But none of those help me unless I can first gain access to the
missing portions (almost cerrtainly two partitions which I had tried to
create - the size matches) which make up more than half of the disk.

Thanks again - I shall ruminate and try to follow your advice on a total
scrub of the disk, if you are able to confirm that my assumptions above are
correct.

In terms of erasing, you have

1) Quick solution - erase MBR with "dd". A windows installer should like that.
2) Long solution - erase whole disk with "dd" by zeroing it.
In my view, this is pointless, unless you want to ensure that programs
like TestDisk will not become confused at some future date and time.
(TestDisk is a tool that can rebuild a partition table, by scanning for
likely structures. If you clean a disk, the tool is less likely to detect
a phantom, leftover structure.)
3) Long solution - erase with DBAN. Same as (2) and normally DBAN is
used to clean a disk before giving it away.

If this was my problem, I might want to review the claimed size of the disk,
and make sure that is correct. I noticed a few days ago, that if I open a
terminal, and use dmesg (the boot up log in Linux), it lists the declared
size of the disk.

dmesg | grep hda ---> should list the number of sectors on drive HDA
dmesg | grep hdb ---> should list the number of sectors on drive HDB

You can get a declared size in Windows as well, if Windows is still running.

Use this tool, in a DOS Command window, and execute "dd --list"
to list all storage devices and partitions. You'll get plenty of
size info.

http://www.chrysocome.net/dd

The Windows syntax for disks, is a little different than Linux. In
that dd web page, you can see this...

\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0 <==> /dev/hda (the whole disk)

\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition1 <==> /dev/hda1 (the first partition)

So you'd want the size info from the Partition0 entry for the disk.

For example, this is the entry for my 160GB boot drive. This
is the size of the whole disk. This looks OK.

\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0
link to \\?\Device\Harddisk0\DR0
Fixed hard disk media. Block size = 512
size is 160041885696 bytes

HTH,
Paul

 

[Al]

Talk about apples and oranges - Windows and Linux - although Linux will read
a FAT or NTFS disk the file system crated via a Linux disk utility is not
compatible with Windows.

Boot from your XP disk - select format and clean install