Detecting mobile harddisk

  • Thread starter Thread starter stefan.steinerberger
  • Start date Start date
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stefan.steinerberger

Hello,

today I formatted my entire hard drive and reinstalled XP.
Now, after reinstalling, I tried to get my files which
were saved on a mobile hard drive during the process.
XP tells me that my mobile hard disk needs to be formatted
first. The interesting thing is that I get the exact same
message on my other computer whose system I haven't
changed a bit.
What is a possible reason and is there a way I can get my files?

Thanks in advance,
Stefan
 
Sounds like it was unplugged improperly and may have messed up the
partition table.

I would start by downloading the Knoppix Linux recovery cd
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/dist/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso

You can burn this CD as an ISO file with
http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm

Once you've done this boot from this CD with the external drive
attached and see if you can browse its contents (Linux can be a little
more forgiving). If not theres a utility called "testdisk" which can
recover the partitions, however this isn't a simple task for the
average user.
 
Once you've done this boot from this CD with the external drive
attached and see if you can browse its contents (Linux can be a little
more forgiving). If not theres a utility called "testdisk" which can
recover the partitions, however this isn't a simple task for the
average user.
Click to expand...

I tried to access it under Ubuntu and was unable to.
testdisk tells me "Bad ending head (CHS and LBA
don't match)". Any idea?
 
I tried to access it under Ubuntu and was unable to.
testdisk tells me "Bad ending head (CHS and LBA
don't match)". Any idea?
Click to expand...
From the testdisk homepage:
Click to expand...

If the HD geometry mismatches the geometry used when creating the
partition table, warning messages such as: Bad sector count, Bad
relative sector or Bad ending head are displayed when Analyse is
selected from the main menu. If you see such errors, you may need to
use the Geometry menu to change the logical number of heads. Try 255,
16, 32, 64, 128 and 240 heads until TestDisk finds all your
partitions. 255 and 240 are the most common head values. If you
installed Linux as the only OS on your hard drive, it tends to default
to only 16 heads.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Menu_Geometry

It could also mean the drive has some bad sectors...
 
If the HD geometry mismatches the geometry used when creating the
partition table, warning messages such as: Bad sector count, Bad
relative sector or Bad ending head are displayed when Analyse is
selected from the main menu. If you see such errors, you may need to
use the Geometry menu to change the logical number of heads. Try 255,
16, 32, 64, 128 and 240 heads until TestDisk finds all your
partitions. 255 and 240 are the most common head values. If you
installed Linux as the only OS on your hard drive, it tends to default
to only 16 heads.http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Menu_Geometry
Click to expand...

I tried that but it had no visible effect.
Furthermore I ran a program called "GetDataBack for ntfs" and it was
able to show me the files including the file tree. However, I cannot
copy
the files because I need to license the program first.
Perhaps anyone of you knows of a freeware program that could do the
same job?

Best wishes,
Stefan
 
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