Drive Image destroyed partition

[Terry Pinnell]

I'd appreciate a bit of urgent hand-holding please. It's been two
years since the first time I used Drive Image 2002. Nor do I have a
confident grasp of partition management anyway.

I have 2 identical '60 GB' HDs on this Windows XP Home PC. Up until
last night they had 2 similar partitions each.
Drive 1
C: system 11.72 GB
D: Data etc 44.14 GB

Drive 2
E: 2 year old copy of system 11.72 GB
F: Routine backup etc 44.14 GB

Last night, after some basic house-keeping, and making 2 'Drive Image
Rescue diskettes', I ran DI, using Copy Drives. I accepted the
default, presumably set as I left it 2 years ago, to copy C to E. I
did change a couple of the settings:
'Check for file system errors' YES
Verify Disk writes YES

Anyway, it all seemed to go as planned at first. DI 2002 asked to
reboot, then started work in 'Caldera DOS', steadily indexing then
copying. But then, after an hour or two, with some 2 or 3 GB copied,
it just stopped, no messages, and my PC rebooted.

The system could not then find E. My PC didn't recognise its
existence.

I repeated the exercise in DI, except this time DI was copying C to
'Unallocated space on HD 2', or something like that. I got the same
result - an unceremonious reboot.

So that entire partition is now zapped ;-(
If I now use DI Drive Operations, this is what I see:

http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Images/DriveImage1.gif

Any suggestions on what next to try to get a working E: 'system 2'
partition back would be greatly welcomed please! I'm very nervous of
making matters worse. Could I use the rescue diskettes? Or must I face
it that E is gone for good? In which case, how can I *confidently*
make a new E? I feel very exposed to losing my entire system if DI can
destroy a partition with such apparent ease.

 

[Guest]

Have you recently changed to SP2: what physical differences exist today which
make this perform differently?

At present you have lost 'nothing' in so far as you have a functioning
system disk 'C Drive' and the first partition on Disk 2 - 'E Drive' - which
has lost its settings.

The failed DI process has most likely corrupted the boot record for the
drive [partition].

You can use Windows Disk Management to reformat and assign a Drive letter to
the unallocated space on disk 2 [previously E Drive].

ALternately look into the DI manual and see what recovery steps are advised
there, however if you have moved to SP2, check that DI 2002 is compatible
with SP2 before using it any further.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Have you recently changed to SP2: what physical differences exist today which
make this perform differently?

At present you have lost 'nothing' in so far as you have a functioning
system disk 'C Drive' and the first partition on Disk 2 - 'E Drive' - which
has lost its settings.

The failed DI process has most likely corrupted the boot record for the
drive [partition].

You can use Windows Disk Management to reformat and assign a Drive letter to
the unallocated space on disk 2 [previously E Drive].

ALternately look into the DI manual and see what recovery steps are advised
there, however if you have moved to SP2, check that DI 2002 is compatible
with SP2 before using it any further.

Thanks. I am using SP1. (I uninstalled SP2 a few weeks ago after a
couple of days of increasing problems.)

Can you clarify what you mean when you say I "have ... the first
partition on Disk 2 - 'E Drive' - which has lost its settings' please?
On Disk 2, apart from F, which happily is still OK, I have that
'unallocated space'. Does that mean it's empty, i.e. cannot be
recovered? Are you saying I can at least get exactly that 11.72 GB
renamed as E? And possibly even get the data back, so that I can boot
from it as an alternative to C, which was possible before this
incident?

Re compatibility, I was confused to find a thread reporting that
Symantec had said DI 2002 was not supported in XP SP1. Unfortunately
the thread tailed off before a clear conclusion emerged.

-------

Some more potentially significant information has turned up. I had
decided that my next step would be to use DI 2002 to make an image of
C. I did some housekeeping again, such as Run chkdsk c: /f, and using
Startup Cop to remove all my many startup programs/processes. I ran DI
and started the image from C to D (both on Disk 1). All was going
smoothly, as before, but then it stopped. This time however I got a
message: "Error #48 Sector Not Found"

Further research turned up several users reporting that this error
arose even though they had done a thorough CHKDSK run. However, I will
repeat my CHKDSK and try again. Must say I'm still very nervous!

 

[johnf]

It doesn't look too bad to me.
Merge Disk2 (unallocated) with Backup [F:]
Re-partition Disk 2 to approx. the same ratios as Disk 1, rename Partition 1
to E: & then image C to E.

I'm also curious as to how you have your cables set up to those drives.

The correct method should be both drives jumpered to CS (Cable Select) &
both on the one cable, plugged into IDE1, with HDD1 on the END connector &
HDD2 on the intermediate connector.
Check your BIOS to make sure the two drives are auto-detected correctly &
then set (standard BIOS menu) to 'Auto' for both drives.
IDE2 used separately to run CD-Rom drive(s).

** Check all that cabling out before you try any more imaging.

--

johnf

Have you recently changed to SP2: what physical differences exist
today which make this perform differently?

At present you have lost 'nothing' in so far as you have a functioning
system disk 'C Drive' and the first partition on Disk 2 - 'E Drive' -
which has lost its settings.

The failed DI process has most likely corrupted the boot record for the
drive [partition].

You can use Windows Disk Management to reformat and assign a Drive
letter to the unallocated space on disk 2 [previously E Drive].

ALternately look into the DI manual and see what recovery steps are
advised there, however if you have moved to SP2, check that DI 2002 is
compatible with SP2 before using it any further.

Thanks. I am using SP1. (I uninstalled SP2 a few weeks ago after a
couple of days of increasing problems.)

Can you clarify what you mean when you say I "have ... the first
partition on Disk 2 - 'E Drive' - which has lost its settings' please?
On Disk 2, apart from F, which happily is still OK, I have that
'unallocated space'. Does that mean it's empty, i.e. cannot be
recovered? Are you saying I can at least get exactly that 11.72 GB
renamed as E? And possibly even get the data back, so that I can boot
from it as an alternative to C, which was possible before this
incident?

Re compatibility, I was confused to find a thread reporting that
Symantec had said DI 2002 was not supported in XP SP1. Unfortunately
the thread tailed off before a clear conclusion emerged.

-------

Some more potentially significant information has turned up. I had
decided that my next step would be to use DI 2002 to make an image of
C. I did some housekeeping again, such as Run chkdsk c: /f, and using
Startup Cop to remove all my many startup programs/processes. I ran DI
and started the image from C to D (both on Disk 1). All was going
smoothly, as before, but then it stopped. This time however I got a
message: "Error #48 Sector Not Found"

Further research turned up several users reporting that this error
arose even though they had done a thorough CHKDSK run. However, I will
repeat my CHKDSK and try again. Must say I'm still very nervous!

 

[Terry Pinnell]

It doesn't look too bad to me.
Merge Disk2 (unallocated) with Backup [F:]
Re-partition Disk 2 to approx. the same ratios as Disk 1, rename Partition 1
to E: & then image C to E.

I'm also curious as to how you have your cables set up to those drives.

The correct method should be both drives jumpered to CS (Cable Select) &
both on the one cable, plugged into IDE1, with HDD1 on the END connector &
HDD2 on the intermediate connector.
Check your BIOS to make sure the two drives are auto-detected correctly &
then set (standard BIOS menu) to 'Auto' for both drives.
IDE2 used separately to run CD-Rom drive(s).

** Check all that cabling out before you try any more imaging.

Many thanks, appreciate the help. I'm reassured by your opening
sentence, and I am indeed making progress. But I still have some
worries. The devil is in the details, so I'll explain fully.

But first, the cables. They should be OK. I have made no changes since
I installed the 2nd identical Maxtor way back, and the modest
partioning and copying I did then with PM 7 and DI 2002 respectively
worked OK. I've had no problems with either HD or any of the 4
partitions - well, no obvious ones anyway. My PC is working fine, and
I am operating with both hard disks.

I started the morning by recovering my E partition, which I managed
more simply than I expected by using XP Computer Management>Disk
Management. Just r-clicked that space and created a partition called
E. Then, because of that bad sector message, I did
chkdsk c: /r
as I'd realised that my previous chkdsk c: /f had not checked the
sectors. I was encouraged when after half an hour it found a bad
sector: "Windows replaced bad clusters in file 10904 of name
windows/system32/glmf32.dll"

I then meant to do a similar chkdsk /r on e:, but carelessly repeated
it on c:. As there appeared to be no Cancel option, I sat through it
again. But I was surprised to see that identical message appear again.
Is that because XP doesn't actually *repair* the sector or cluster,
but just sort of fixes the index or whatever?

Anyway, I then tried to repeat my drive copy of C to E with DI 2002.
But this time, although both C and E were apparently identical sizes
of 11.72 GB, I noticed that it said the destination was too small.
Presumably by a whisker.

So then I ran PM 7 and nervously moved E and F around, and marginally
increased E's size. That ran 9 'operations' and took about 3 hours!

But now I am very confused by the display I see in PM:
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/PM-AfterChanges.gif

For one thing, I don't recall previously seeing anything about an
'Extended' partition before the changes, although I could be mistaken.
Is this an error on my part? Can I get rid of this Extended partition,
which just adds another level complexity as far as I'm concerned?

But also, the sizes shown do not square with what I get from XP Disk
Management:
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/XPDiskMgmt.gif

That shows E as only 11.83 GB, not 12.11 GB.

Any further help would be greatly appreciated please, as I am *very*
uncomfortable with this stuff.

 

[johnf]

I wouldn't worry about the extended partition, just pretend it's not there.
It probably was created when you were resizing the partitions using XP
Computer Management.
I prefer to use PM for all that sort of stuff, I'm more at home with PM as I
can see exactly what's going on & pending.

If you like, have a go at merging the extended bit into [D] using PM, as D
is only for data; that will leave your C:E ratios untouched for future
back-up imaging.
--

johnf

It doesn't look too bad to me.
Merge Disk2 (unallocated) with Backup [F:]
Re-partition Disk 2 to approx. the same ratios as Disk 1, rename
Partition 1 to E: & then image C to E.

I'm also curious as to how you have your cables set up to those drives.

The correct method should be both drives jumpered to CS (Cable Select)
& both on the one cable, plugged into IDE1, with HDD1 on the END
connector & HDD2 on the intermediate connector.
Check your BIOS to make sure the two drives are auto-detected
correctly & then set (standard BIOS menu) to 'Auto' for both drives.
IDE2 used separately to run CD-Rom drive(s).

** Check all that cabling out before you try any more imaging.

Many thanks, appreciate the help. I'm reassured by your opening
sentence, and I am indeed making progress. But I still have some
worries. The devil is in the details, so I'll explain fully.

But first, the cables. They should be OK. I have made no changes since
I installed the 2nd identical Maxtor way back, and the modest
partioning and copying I did then with PM 7 and DI 2002 respectively
worked OK. I've had no problems with either HD or any of the 4
partitions - well, no obvious ones anyway. My PC is working fine, and
I am operating with both hard disks.

I started the morning by recovering my E partition, which I managed
more simply than I expected by using XP Computer Management>Disk
Management. Just r-clicked that space and created a partition called
E. Then, because of that bad sector message, I did
chkdsk c: /r
as I'd realised that my previous chkdsk c: /f had not checked the
sectors. I was encouraged when after half an hour it found a bad
sector: "Windows replaced bad clusters in file 10904 of name
windows/system32/glmf32.dll"

I then meant to do a similar chkdsk /r on e:, but carelessly repeated
it on c:. As there appeared to be no Cancel option, I sat through it
again. But I was surprised to see that identical message appear again.
Is that because XP doesn't actually *repair* the sector or cluster,
but just sort of fixes the index or whatever?

Anyway, I then tried to repeat my drive copy of C to E with DI 2002.
But this time, although both C and E were apparently identical sizes
of 11.72 GB, I noticed that it said the destination was too small.
Presumably by a whisker.

So then I ran PM 7 and nervously moved E and F around, and marginally
increased E's size. That ran 9 'operations' and took about 3 hours!

But now I am very confused by the display I see in PM:
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/PM-AfterChanges.gif

For one thing, I don't recall previously seeing anything about an
'Extended' partition before the changes, although I could be mistaken.
Is this an error on my part? Can I get rid of this Extended partition,
which just adds another level complexity as far as I'm concerned?

But also, the sizes shown do not square with what I get from XP Disk
Management:
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/XPDiskMgmt.gif

That shows E as only 11.83 GB, not 12.11 GB.

Any further help would be greatly appreciated please, as I am *very*
uncomfortable with this stuff.

 

[johnf]

BTW, stick with DI2002, don't switch to DI 7.0 (which Symantec recommends
for XP).
I tried DI 7.0 & had a few failures, as it tries to image in Windows, rather
than reboot & do it in "DOS", so I dumped that and went back to 2002.

--

johnf

I wouldn't worry about the extended partition, just pretend it's not
there. It probably was created when you were resizing the partitions
using XP Computer Management.
I prefer to use PM for all that sort of stuff, I'm more at home with PM
as I can see exactly what's going on & pending.

If you like, have a go at merging the extended bit into [D] using PM,
as D is only for data; that will leave your C:E ratios untouched for
future back-up imaging.
--

johnf

It doesn't look too bad to me.
Merge Disk2 (unallocated) with Backup [F:]
Re-partition Disk 2 to approx. the same ratios as Disk 1, rename
Partition 1 to E: & then image C to E.

I'm also curious as to how you have your cables set up to those
drives. The correct method should be both drives jumpered to CS (Cable
Select)
& both on the one cable, plugged into IDE1, with HDD1 on the END
connector & HDD2 on the intermediate connector.
Check your BIOS to make sure the two drives are auto-detected
correctly & then set (standard BIOS menu) to 'Auto' for both drives.
IDE2 used separately to run CD-Rom drive(s).

** Check all that cabling out before you try any more imaging.

Many thanks, appreciate the help. I'm reassured by your opening
sentence, and I am indeed making progress. But I still have some
worries. The devil is in the details, so I'll explain fully.

But first, the cables. They should be OK. I have made no changes since
I installed the 2nd identical Maxtor way back, and the modest
partioning and copying I did then with PM 7 and DI 2002 respectively
worked OK. I've had no problems with either HD or any of the 4
partitions - well, no obvious ones anyway. My PC is working fine, and
I am operating with both hard disks.

I started the morning by recovering my E partition, which I managed
more simply than I expected by using XP Computer Management>Disk
Management. Just r-clicked that space and created a partition called
E. Then, because of that bad sector message, I did
chkdsk c: /r
as I'd realised that my previous chkdsk c: /f had not checked the
sectors. I was encouraged when after half an hour it found a bad
sector: "Windows replaced bad clusters in file 10904 of name
windows/system32/glmf32.dll"

I then meant to do a similar chkdsk /r on e:, but carelessly repeated
it on c:. As there appeared to be no Cancel option, I sat through it
again. But I was surprised to see that identical message appear again.
Is that because XP doesn't actually *repair* the sector or cluster,
but just sort of fixes the index or whatever?

Anyway, I then tried to repeat my drive copy of C to E with DI 2002.
But this time, although both C and E were apparently identical sizes
of 11.72 GB, I noticed that it said the destination was too small.
Presumably by a whisker.

So then I ran PM 7 and nervously moved E and F around, and marginally
increased E's size. That ran 9 'operations' and took about 3 hours!

But now I am very confused by the display I see in PM:
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/PM-AfterChanges.gif

For one thing, I don't recall previously seeing anything about an
'Extended' partition before the changes, although I could be mistaken.
Is this an error on my part? Can I get rid of this Extended partition,
which just adds another level complexity as far as I'm concerned?

But also, the sizes shown do not square with what I get from XP Disk
Management:
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/XPDiskMgmt.gif

That shows E as only 11.83 GB, not 12.11 GB.

Any further help would be greatly appreciated please, as I am *very*
uncomfortable with this stuff.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

BTW, stick with DI2002, don't switch to DI 7.0 (which Symantec recommends
for XP).
I tried DI 7.0 & had a few failures, as it tries to image in Windows, rather
than reboot & do it in "DOS", so I dumped that and went back to 2002.

Thanks for the tip - I'll follow it.

As mentioned, in my googling I came across a longish thread
in which several users quoted Symantec as saying DI 2002 did not
support XP with SP1.

It's here
http://tinyurl.com/4eqrr
and the initial part of the post by Bert Smith says:
-------
Please be aware of the following information:
"Drive Image 2002 did not support SP1 because of the changes made to
the file system, which occurred after 2002 was released. Drive Image 7
supports SP1.
Alden T., MCP PowerQuest Technical Support"
-------

Others, Michael Solomon (MS-MVP) amongst them, had no trouble, either
running from XP or the rescue diskette. The thread fizzled out
inconclusively.

BTW, so far I've had no reply from Symantec to my urgent email on
Thursday. Whatever the ultimate cause turns out to be
(probably/hopefully that single bad sector on C: IMO, but what do I
know <g>), it's astonishing that DI 2002 should not only crash like
that without any message, but should unceremoniously delete my
partition!

 

[Terry Pinnell]

I wouldn't worry about the extended partition, just pretend it's not there.

It probably was created when you were resizing the partitions using XP
Computer Management.

As described, I used XP only for *creating* the E partition. I used PM
for the resizing: ("So then I ran PM 7 and nervously moved E and F
around, and marginally increased E's size. That ran 9 'operations' and
took about 3 hours!")

So I'm guessing some of my novice moving and dragging caused this
'extended' partition? As you saw from the screenshot, it's not shown
by XP Disk Management. When I use DI 2002 and click Disk Operations:
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/DI-AfterChanges.gif
I see it is shown by the faint blue outline around F, yes?

I prefer to use PM for all that sort of stuff, I'm more at home with PM as I
can see exactly what's going on & pending.

If you like, have a go at merging the extended bit into [D] using PM, as D
is only for data; that will leave your C:E ratios untouched for future
back-up imaging.

May well do that. First though, I still have the task of getting my
current C system partition copied onto E...

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Status report:
Empty partition E is now showing correctly within My Computer.

Current state of partitions is shown in
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/PM-AfterChanges.gif
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/XPDiskMgmt.gif
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/DI-AfterChanges.gif

Requirement:
Using Drive Image 2002 (and PM 7 if necessary), how can I get back
to the position I had before E got deleted?

IOW, I want E to be an exact copy of C. On booting up I will then see
it for a few seconds as the alternative option, "Windows XP Home
Edition #1", so that I could boot into that in an emergency.

I tried using the Copy Drive facility of DI 2002, but it says it will
delete E, and prepares to copy only to 'Unallocated space'. So I
canceled that.

Since then, here's another approach that occured to me this evening. I
thought I should be able to take advantage of the precautionary
*image* of C that I wrote in F yesterday. It seems to me that I should
now be able to restore this to E. But here again DI says it's going to
*delete* E to do this! Delete its contents (if there were any),
obviously yes, but why delete the partition entity itself?

The very last message I get before I commit to this restore is this:
-------
Deleting partition: E:System 2
(NTFS, Primary volume, 12111.5 MB on Disk:2)

Restoring partition(s):
System (*) 8.21 GB
From image file: F:\MyBackup-C8Sep04-1330.pqi
To free space location (12111.5 MB in size) on Disk: 2
-------

Can someone explain to me why I cannot just get the restore into E
please? Why would DI instead place it in 'free space'? If it ends up
in 'free space', how can I assign it the drive letter E, to get things
back into shape?

There's plainly some basic concept here I just haven't grasped.
Scouring the DI manual and hours of googling still hasn't enlightened
me. Surely it shouldn't be this hard to achieve what I'm trying to do?
I somehow accomplished precisely that configuration when I used DI
about 2 years ago. Probably turn out to be blindingly obvious, but so
far it's still eluding me...

Any further help would be much appreciated please.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Pleased to say I have now re-copied my XP Home system partition C onto
partition E with Drive Image 2002, and E is now of course up to date
rather than nearly 2 years old. This is my setup:

HD 1 (60 GB MAXTOR)
-------------------
C system
D data

HD 2 (60 GB MAXTOR)
------------------
E system 2 (copy of C)
F more data

However...it no longer works. When I reboot I get the familiar 3
options for a few seconds:

Windows XP Home Edition
Windows XP Home Edition #1
XP Recovery Console

But if I choose the second, instead of booting into my 'alternative'
XP as it used to do, I now get this error message:

"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or
corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Please reinstall a copy of the above file"

Yet that file looks identical in both C and E (75.6 KB, 29th Aug
2002).

Any suggestions on how I might try fixing this remaining obstacle
please?

(To make things worse, my monitor has suddenly started to
intermittently switch itself off after sometimes only a few seconds of
inactivity. I have to assume this is just bad luck and not related!)

 

[johnf]

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm