PQRP file format

B

Bruce Williams

Hi all,
This is a message I posted on the CDFreaks forum about 15 hours ago. As
yet, there have been no replies.
If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear 'em! :)
Thanks.
Bruce.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi guys,
I've read quite a few threads on different boards in the last hour or
so.... and unfortunately, none of them have helped me, yet.
Before I get into the dilemma, a quick run down of my system specs:

Athlon 2800XP+ processor
1 GB DDR333 RAM
ASUS A7V8X-X motherboard
Ricoh MP7083 CD-RW
C:/G: Seagate Barracuda (30GB)
D: Seagate Barracuda (120GB)
E: Seagate Barracuda (22GB)
F: IBM Deskstar SCSI-2 (9GB)
Win2KPro

OK, now the dilemma.... oh joy....

My best friend and I have spent the last 3 years recording an album. It's
almost finished.
That C:/G: combo in my specs.... that's a 30GB drive partitioned into a
1GB C: NTFS and a 29GB G: FAT32, and the whole freakin' album is on the G:
partition.
Now, call me a dick if you like, but that's not going to help me.
I decided I needed more C: drive space.
The album takes up 24GB of the 29GB.
So, I ran Partition Magic v6.
I gave it 3 instructions.
1. I told it to move the G: data towards the end of the drive.
2. Resize the G: from the front end, making it smaller.
3. Expand the C: to give me a 3GB C:.
I rebooted as instructed.
PM started it's job, but then it stopped responding.
I waited, and waited, and waited....
Nothing.
So, I rebooted, fearing the worst.
Sure enough, the G: is now a PGRP file system.
And yes, I've read up on that... I understand that it's a Powerquest
invention that prevents Windows from writing to the partition (Windows
won't write to a file system it doesn't understand) so that the user can
have time to recover the lost data.
I've also read that it is not unusual for PM to take a long time to
complete tasks, and that I should have tried the NUMLOCK key to see if the
system was still responding.... but it's too late for that now.
I've run PTEdit.
I've changed the file system descriptor to FAT32.
I've rebooted.
The directory strucure on G: is intact (for the most part), but the data
is not showing up in Windows Explorer.
However (and this is where my hope is hanging by a thread), I am confident
that the data can be recovered because if I launch PM again, it shows G:
as being 27,XXXMB total, 24,XXXMB used, and 389MB free.
Obviously, those figures don't add up, and if I've lost 2GB of data, then
so be it. I'll take my chances. I'm hoping that 2GB is just unallocated
space.
But, it would appear that somewhere on that drive is my 24GB of music
data.
Please, please, please.... does anyone have any ideas as to what I should
try next?
I cannot describe how catastrophic this is going to be if I lose all that
data.
And I know what you're thinking... "the guy has over 150GB of disk space
elsewhere... why didn't he move the critical data off the drive he was
going to mess with?"
Yeah, believe me, I've been wondering that for the last 2 hours now.
If anyone has any ideas, I would be extremely grateful.
Have a good day/night all.
 
S

Svend Olaf Mikkelsen

Hi all,
This is a message I posted on the CDFreaks forum about 15 hours ago. As
yet, there have been no replies.
If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear 'em! :)
Thanks.
Bruce.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi guys,
I've read quite a few threads on different boards in the last hour or
so.... and unfortunately, none of them have helped me, yet.
Before I get into the dilemma, a quick run down of my system specs:

Athlon 2800XP+ processor
1 GB DDR333 RAM
ASUS A7V8X-X motherboard
Ricoh MP7083 CD-RW
C:/G: Seagate Barracuda (30GB)
D: Seagate Barracuda (120GB)
E: Seagate Barracuda (22GB)
F: IBM Deskstar SCSI-2 (9GB)
Win2KPro

OK, now the dilemma.... oh joy....

My best friend and I have spent the last 3 years recording an album. It's
almost finished.
That C:/G: combo in my specs.... that's a 30GB drive partitioned into a
1GB C: NTFS and a 29GB G: FAT32, and the whole freakin' album is on the G:
partition.
Now, call me a dick if you like, but that's not going to help me.
I decided I needed more C: drive space.
The album takes up 24GB of the 29GB.
So, I ran Partition Magic v6.
I gave it 3 instructions.
1. I told it to move the G: data towards the end of the drive.
2. Resize the G: from the front end, making it smaller.
3. Expand the C: to give me a 3GB C:.
I rebooted as instructed.
PM started it's job, but then it stopped responding.
I waited, and waited, and waited....
Nothing.
So, I rebooted, fearing the worst.
Sure enough, the G: is now a PGRP file system.
And yes, I've read up on that... I understand that it's a Powerquest
invention that prevents Windows from writing to the partition (Windows
won't write to a file system it doesn't understand) so that the user can
have time to recover the lost data.
I've also read that it is not unusual for PM to take a long time to
complete tasks, and that I should have tried the NUMLOCK key to see if the
system was still responding.... but it's too late for that now.
I've run PTEdit.
I've changed the file system descriptor to FAT32.
I've rebooted.
The directory strucure on G: is intact (for the most part), but the data
is not showing up in Windows Explorer.
However (and this is where my hope is hanging by a thread), I am confident
that the data can be recovered because if I launch PM again, it shows G:
as being 27,XXXMB total, 24,XXXMB used, and 389MB free.
Obviously, those figures don't add up, and if I've lost 2GB of data, then
so be it. I'll take my chances. I'm hoping that 2GB is just unallocated
space.
But, it would appear that somewhere on that drive is my 24GB of music
data.
Please, please, please.... does anyone have any ideas as to what I should
try next?
I cannot describe how catastrophic this is going to be if I lose all that
data.
And I know what you're thinking... "the guy has over 150GB of disk space
elsewhere... why didn't he move the critical data off the drive he was
going to mess with?"
Yeah, believe me, I've been wondering that for the last 2 hours now.
If anyone has any ideas, I would be extremely grateful.
Have a good day/night all.

Since you know how to use ptedit, undo the changes you made, and make
the problem partition a PQRP (hex 3C) again. Then reboot. The
alternative to that is to boot to a DOS floppy only, and examine from
there using DOS tools.

Then get Findpart for Windows at

http://www.partitionsupport.com/utilities.htm

do:

findpart all fp.txt

and

findpart pqrp 1 fp-a.txt

and mail me the files fp.txt and fp-a.txt.
 
J

jvax

Hi all,

Since you know how to use ptedit, undo the changes you made, and make
the problem partition a PQRP (hex 3C) again. Then reboot. The
alternative to that is to boot to a DOS floppy only, and examine from
there using DOS tools.

Then get Findpart for Windows at

http://www.partitionsupport.com/utilities.htm

do:

findpart all fp.txt

and

findpart pqrp 1 fp-a.txt

and mail me the files fp.txt and fp-a.txt.

I have a PqRP problem too.
I use Window Server 2003 with Server Magic 4.
I tried to resize a FAT32 logical volume on my first disk up by 10GB
that was unallocated behind it.
The process seemed to complete fine but when I rebooted, windows
couldnot recognize the volume anymore.
As I ran Server Magic, I noticed the volume was flagged PqRP.
Here's the output of "findpart all" http://133.6.108.215/fp.txt
Here's the output of "findpart pqrp 1" http://133.6.108.215/fp-a.txt
And here's a pic captured on my ServerMagic window.
http://133.6.108.215/ServerMagic_window.jpg
I hope you can help me because the data on that volume is very
important to me.
Thank you in advance.
__
jvax
 
S

Svend Olaf Mikkelsen

I have a PqRP problem too.
I use Window Server 2003 with Server Magic 4.
I tried to resize a FAT32 logical volume on my first disk up by 10GB
that was unallocated behind it.
The process seemed to complete fine but when I rebooted, windows
couldnot recognize the volume anymore.
As I ran Server Magic, I noticed the volume was flagged PqRP.
Here's the output of "findpart all" http://133.6.108.215/fp.txt
Here's the output of "findpart pqrp 1" http://133.6.108.215/fp-a.txt
And here's a pic captured on my ServerMagic window.
http://133.6.108.215/ServerMagic_window.jpg
I hope you can help me because the data on that volume is very
important to me.
Thank you in advance.
__
jvax

I will quote the Pqrp program announcement:

"If the damage type is listed as 1, 2, 3 or 4 there is a good chance
that correctly editing the ID 3C partition table entry will recover
the partition. For damage types 3 and 4 it is not recognized what
happened, but the directory structure appears to be OK."

This should be a case where the Powerquest Ptedit method will work. If
you want me to edit the partition tables with a batch file, mail me,
since Google is too slow for this in my taste.
 

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