recovering lost partitions...

[GO]

Hello,

XP crashed on me yesterday and upon rebooting the system I found that my
second hard drive was "missing". Probably not really relevant but at the
time of the crash I was copying a disc and "burning" the image to said hard
drive. Under XP's Disk Management I discovered that it's now marked as
unitialized, and have lost the 3 partitions I had on it. I haven't lost
anything crucial but I would still like to recover the partitions if
possible. I've run some basic diagnostics and nothing unusual has shown up
in the Event Logs so I'm assuming the drive is still ok. I've run Acronis'
Disk Director partition recovery tool (the quick method) and it was unable
to recovery anything. I'm in the process of running the complete/extensive
test in Disk Director but am wondering if it will recovery anything either.
It's presently been running for 12 hours and judging from it's progress it
will likely take 3 or 4 days to complete. Is anyone here familiar with
Disk Director? I realize it's going sector by sector but is this a normal
amount of time (for a 200GB drive)? Does anyone have any other tools that
may do the trick (something free or inexpensive would be preferable)?


TIA,

Greg

 

[GO]

Too weird. XP crashed again tonight (during the running of Disk Director).
When I rebooted my partitions were all magically back and intact. Now to
find out what's causing the crashing....

I'd still appreciate any insight on Disk Director for any that use it.


Thanks,

Greg

 

[Gerry]

Please provide a copy of the Stop Error Report.

Disable automatic restart on system failure. This should help by
allowing time to write down the STOP code properly. Right click on
the My Computer icon on the Desktop and select Properties, Advanced,
Start-Up and Recovery, System Failure and uncheck box before
Automatically Restart.

Do not re-enable automatic restart on system failure even after you have
solved the problem as it's better disabled. Check for variants of the
Stop Error message.

An alternative is to keep pressing the F8 key during Start-Up and select
option - Disable automatic restart on system failure.

Also please provide copies of all Error and Warning Reports appearing in
the System and Application logs in Event Viewer for the time when the
error occurs. No Information Reports please.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer. When researching the meaning
of the error, information regarding Event ID, Source and Description
are important.

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427/en-us

Part of the Description of the error will include a link, which you
should double click for further information. You can copy using copy
and paste. Often the link will, however, say there is no further
information.
http://go.microsoft.com/fw.link/events.asp
(Please note the hyperlink above is for illustration purposes only)

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.


--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[GO]

Hi Gerry,

My system has always been set to not restart on a failure. Not much help in
this case anyways as the machine completely froze on both occasions (ie no
life whatsoever. Mouse was frozen, no keyboard, etc). Event Viewer is also
of little help here as it's surprisingly "clean". Nothing out of the
ordinary in the Application log and the only thing in the System log is some
stupid ATI checksum messages (seems to be a known bug as it's been reported
for the last several releases of their drivers). I'm thinking it's either
some bizarre software/driver conflict or a sign of pending hardware failure.
I do think the hardware is fine but will run some tests to be safe. The
hard drives seem to be fine as Windows detects no errors nor does the
diagnostic tools provided from the manufacturer (Maxtor). I'm aware of
"memtest" to test system memory but is there any good diagnostic tools for
other hardware (such as the motherboard)?