Desparate to recover from my stupid mistake with mkdosfs.

[markh1289]

Hi,

I did a dumb thnig (no, a VERY dumb thing).
I'd just like to confirm it was an irreversably stupid thing, but if
there's any way of me recovery I'd love to hear it.

I booted Knoppix (in the form of Auditor Security Collection) from CD
in IBM T43.
Then,
mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sda1

thinking this was a USB flash drive.
I mounted it as type vfat, created a directory & wrote a small text
file to it all off which worked.

Turns out /dev/sda1 is WinXP partition of the HD, hence when CD is
removed & laptop booted, C: is no longer bootable.

The C: drive has 2 partitions, /dev/sd1 mentioned above & /dev/sda2
which I think is where the IBM Recovery data is for getting laptop back
to factory default.

Is there any way to correct this so WinXP will boot?

Thanks for any help.

Regards, MH

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hi,

I did a dumb thnig (no, a VERY dumb thing).
I'd just like to confirm it was an irreversably stupid thing, but if
there's any way of me recovery I'd love to hear it.

I booted Knoppix (in the form of Auditor Security Collection) from CD
in IBM T43.
Then,
mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sda1

thinking this was a USB flash drive.
I mounted it as type vfat, created a directory & wrote a small text
file to it all off which worked.

Turns out /dev/sda1 is WinXP partition of the HD, hence when CD is
removed & laptop booted, C: is no longer bootable.

The C: drive has 2 partitions, /dev/sd1 mentioned above & /dev/sda2
which I think is where the IBM Recovery data is for getting laptop back
to factory default.

Is there any way to correct this so WinXP will boot?

Thanks for any help.

Regards, MH

What does mkdosfs do?
How far does the WinXP boot process go?
What error messages (if any) do you see?

 

[John]

I believe it to be a Linux Partitioning Utilty

--
Regards

John

MCP Windows XP Professional

 

[markh1289]

The WinXP boot process doesn't start.
As soon as the IBM splash screen finishes (a few seconds after powerup)
I get
"Disk is not bootable, insert a diskette".

I'm hoping to be able to recover under Knoppix (if at all).

Regards, MH

 

[markh1289]

The WinXP boot process doesn't start.
As soon as the IBM splash screen finishes (a few seconds after powerup)
I get
"Disk is not bootable, insert a diskette".

I'm hoping to be able to recover under Knoppix (if at all).

Regards, MH

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

The WinXP boot process doesn't start.
As soon as the IBM splash screen finishes (a few seconds after powerup)
I get
"Disk is not bootable, insert a diskette".

I'm hoping to be able to recover under Knoppix (if at all).

Regards, MH

If you repartitioned your disk then you need a partition recovery
tool. Here are a few:

http://www.restorer2000.com/r2k.htm
http://www.hddrecovery.com.au
http://bootmaster.filerecovery.biz
http://www.runtime.org/ (GetDataBack)
http://www.runtime.org/ (has a trial version)
www.acronis.com (RecoveryExpert)
http://www.partition-manager.com/corporate/

You can get an idea if you have any partitions left by
booting the machine with a Win98 boot disk from
www.bootdisk.com, then running ntfsdos.exe /L:MN
(www.sysinternals.com).

 

[Michael Trausch]

Hi,

I did a dumb thnig (no, a VERY dumb thing).
I'd just like to confirm it was an irreversably stupid thing, but if
there's any way of me recovery I'd love to hear it.

I booted Knoppix (in the form of Auditor Security Collection) from CD
in IBM T43.
Then,
mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sda1

thinking this was a USB flash drive.
I mounted it as type vfat, created a directory & wrote a small text
file to it all off which worked.

Turns out /dev/sda1 is WinXP partition of the HD, hence when CD is
removed & laptop booted, C: is no longer bootable.

The C: drive has 2 partitions, /dev/sd1 mentioned above & /dev/sda2
which I think is where the IBM Recovery data is for getting laptop back
to factory default.

Did you leave the USB key drive plugged in?

The T43 can (and tries) to boot from USB. If that fails, the grace of
failure is determined by the boot sector code on the USB device.
/dev/sd* are SCSI or emulated SCSI devices (such as USB drives). The
IBM T43 uses an IDE hard disk, whose partitions are on /dev/hda.

In short, unless you have a very weird setup, or actually typed an h
instead of an s, your laptop should be fine.

HTH,
Mike

 

[Miha Verlic]

In short, unless you have a very weird setup, or actually typed an h
instead of an s, your laptop should be fine.

newer laptops already have SATA drives...

I'd recommend you try to rescue data with something like Easy Recovery
Pro or some similar tool.

 

[Malke]

Hi,

I did a dumb thnig (no, a VERY dumb thing).
I'd just like to confirm it was an irreversably stupid thing, but if
there's any way of me recovery I'd love to hear it.

I booted Knoppix (in the form of Auditor Security Collection) from CD
in IBM T43.
Then,
mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sda1

thinking this was a USB flash drive.
I mounted it as type vfat, created a directory & wrote a small text
file to it all off which worked.

Turns out /dev/sda1 is WinXP partition of the HD, hence when CD is
removed & laptop booted, C: is no longer bootable.

The C: drive has 2 partitions, /dev/sd1 mentioned above & /dev/sda2
which I think is where the IBM Recovery data is for getting laptop
back to factory default.

Since Knoppix defaults to Read-Only, I'm more than a bit surprised.
Thinkpads are normally configured to NTFS. But if you didn't get an
error when you tried to convert the file system to FAT32 (to which
Linux can write), then you hosed your system. There is no going back.

If the data was crucial, stop using the computer *immediately*. Contact
a professional data recovery firm - I like DriveSavers
(www.drivesavers.com) - but there are others. Their services are not
inexpensive, but only you can determine the worth of your data.

Naturally, you will want to spend some time 1) learning about using
Linux if you want to use it again; 2) use imaging software before you
want to play; 3) back up, back up, back up.

Malke

 

[aboice]

The HMM for the IBM T43 indicates it uses IDE drives. 30GB to 80GB and
had XP Home or Professional on it when shipped. I was able to recover
an Windows 2K drive that was unbootable even after a reimage, once
Linux had been installed on it.

If you have critical data on the drive professional recovery may be
required before trying this fix.

Create a Win98 boot disk with fdisk on it. Boot to a dos prompt and run
fdisk /mbr This should repair the master boot record. This fix has also
been able to correct page size errors that prevent Win2K systems from
booting.

 

[Miguel De Anda]

newer laptops already have SATA drives...

I'd recommend you try to rescue data with something like Easy Recovery
Pro or some similar tool.

Acronis has a nice tool that works too.

 

[Michael Trausch]

newer laptops already have SATA drives...

I'd recommend you try to rescue data with something like Easy Recovery
Pro or some similar tool.

The T43 that I had for a short time did not have one... it may be
possible that other models of the T43 do, but I know that mine still had
IDE and still lived at /dev/hda.

- Mike

 

[Rick Moen]

[Crosspost snipped in followups.]

(e-mail address removed) wrote:

Did you leave the USB key drive plugged in?

The T43 can (and tries) to boot from USB. If that fails, the grace of
failure is determined by the boot sector code on the USB device.
/dev/sd* are SCSI or emulated SCSI devices (such as USB drives). The
IBM T43 uses an IDE hard disk, whose partitions are on /dev/hda.

I'm pretty sure that T43 has an ICH6-M SATA chip, which you'll typically
support in Linux using libata's ata_piix or ahci driver. libata drivers
use SCSI addressing.