Recovering an uninitialized NTFS hard disk

[Poldie]

I booted from my XP SP2 CD to try and perform scandisk on a drive. (I
couldn't defrag it because there was some problem or other which
Windows suggested I run scandisk to fix). The PC loaded up the
drivers etc, but then the PC rebooted. Great. Even better, now, my
other 300gb drive is showing as "not initialized" and "unallocated" in
the Computer Management tool. This has happened before, and I fixed
it by initializing it, then running some freeware app to recover
files, which it sort of did, although it couldn't get everything back,
but it was mostly ok. I have no idea why this happens. It doesn't
seem to be something which I can find references to on the net. My
PC is ok apart from this, and I have no idea why it happens. I have
two physical drives. One is partitioned as C: and D:, which are fine,
and the other is F:.

So my questions are:

1) Why does this happen?
2) Which app do you recommend I use to recover the data?
3) Is there a way of simply `initializing` the drive and have it
rebuild the various structures it needs to see the data which is
manifestly still perfectly intact on the drive?

Cheers!

 

[Ed M.]

I booted from my XP SP2 CD to try and perform scandisk on a drive. (I
couldn't defrag it because there was some problem or other which
Windows suggested I run scandisk to fix). The PC loaded up the
drivers etc, but then the PC rebooted. Great. Even better, now, my
other 300gb drive is showing as "not initialized" and "unallocated" in
the Computer Management tool. This has happened before, and I fixed
it by initializing it, then running some freeware app to recover
files, which it sort of did, although it couldn't get everything back,
but it was mostly ok. I have no idea why this happens. It doesn't
seem to be something which I can find references to on the net. My
PC is ok apart from this, and I have no idea why it happens. I have
two physical drives. One is partitioned as C: and D:, which are fine,
and the other is F:.

So my questions are:

1) Why does this happen?

Too many ways the MFT can get damaged to even mention. Files can get
corrupted just from normal use, but if it does it again suspect the drive is
failing.

2) Which app do you recommend I use to recover the data?

There are a lot of recovery apps out there. Just do a Google search and you
may find one that is either free or is shareware and gives a trial period.
None that I know of is as good as professional recovery, but that is very
expensive. Backups are really the way to preserve your data.

3) Is there a way of simply `initializing` the drive and have it
rebuild the various structures it needs to see the data which is
manifestly still perfectly intact on the drive?

There are some apps like Acronis Disk Director Suite and Partition Magic
that might help because they can be booted outside the OS. Sometimes it just
cannot be done without destroying the data on the drive.

Cheers!

I wish you luck.......

Ed

 

[meerkat]

I booted from my XP SP2 CD to try and perform scandisk on a drive. (I
couldn't defrag it because there was some problem or other which
Windows suggested I run scandisk to fix). The PC loaded up the
drivers etc, but then the PC rebooted. Great. Even better, now, my
other 300gb drive is showing as "not initialized" and "unallocated"
in
the Computer Management tool. This has happened before, and I
fixed
it by initializing it, then running some freeware app to recover
files, which it sort of did, although it couldn't get everything
back,
but it was mostly ok. I have no idea why this happens. It doesn't
seem to be something which I can find references to on the net. My
PC is ok apart from this, and I have no idea why it happens. I
have
two physical drives. One is partitioned as C: and D:, which are
fine,
and the other is F:.

So my questions are:

1) Why does this happen?
2) Which app do you recommend I use to recover the data?
3) Is there a way of simply `initializing` the drive and have it
rebuild the various structures it needs to see the data which is
manifestly still perfectly intact on the drive?

You say your machine reboots, instead of loading the OS
properly ?.
See if you can start it in `Safe Mode` (dab F8 on start up)
If that works, check your Event Viewer for errors.

 

[JAD]

I booted from my XP SP2 CD to try and perform scandisk on a drive. (I
couldn't defrag it because there was some problem or other which
Windows suggested I run scandisk to fix). The PC loaded up the
drivers etc, but then the PC rebooted. Great. Even better, now, my
other 300gb drive is showing as "not initialized" and "unallocated" in
the Computer Management tool. This has happened before, and I fixed
it by initializing it, then running some freeware app to recover
files, which it sort of did, although it couldn't get everything back,
but it was mostly ok. I have no idea why this happens. It doesn't
seem to be something which I can find references to on the net. My
PC is ok apart from this, and I have no idea why it happens. I have
two physical drives. One is partitioned as C: and D:, which are fine,
and the other is F:.

So my questions are:

1) Why does this happen?
2) Which app do you recommend I use to recover the data?
3) Is there a way of simply `initializing` the drive and have it
rebuild the various structures it needs to see the data which is
manifestly still perfectly intact on the drive?

Cheers!

Out of curiosity did/do you get a checksum error at boot?
Does the BIOS see the drives?

 

[Poldie]

You say your machine reboots, instead of loading the OS
properly ?.

No, I said it reboots when I boot up the XP installation cd, before I
get any options as to whether I want to install, repair, run the
recovery console etc. The OS boots up just fine - it's just that
drive F was missing.

Last time I did an initialize and quick format, then recovered the
files using some app or other. This time I couldn't be bothered
because I'd learned from last time and backed (almost) everything up,
so I did a proper, slow install.

But this has pushed me to get onto Linux, and using windows either as
a dual boot option, or via a virtual machine!

 

[Poldie]

Out of curiosity did/do you get a checksum error at boot?
Does the BIOS see the drives?

I had no errors at any time. The bios saw the drives at all time, as
did windows (from the computer management app). It just wasn't mapped
to a drive letter, and was showing as `not initialized.`

 

[DK]

Too many ways the MFT can get damaged to even mention. Files can get
corrupted just from normal use, but if it does it again suspect the drive is
failing.

I just had five directories (~ 30 Gb) disappearing without a trace
overnight and without anything obvious to trigger it. Tons of smal files
in each. Apparently, root names for them got corrupted. I was able to
recover everything from backup but this makes me wonder:

Does NTFS really offer any advantage beyond 4 Gb file size
and user/security features??? Is it perhaps less stable than FAT32?

Over 15 years, I never had a real problem with FAT/FAT32, yet with
physically 100% good drive the apparent corruption of MFT (gone
completely unnoticed by WIndows, BTW) wiped 30 Gb off NTFS
drive just like that. Plus, the MTF reserves ridiculously large
volume space just for itself. Seems like 10% of HDD is
wasted just for the priviledge of having NTFS that seems prone
to all kinds of software problems!

Would I be better off converting all of my drives to FAT32 if I have
no use for user-level permissions and disk quotas?

DK

 

[Ed M.]

I just had five directories (~ 30 Gb) disappearing without a trace

overnight and without anything obvious to trigger it. Tons of smal files
in each. Apparently, root names for them got corrupted. I was able to
recover everything from backup but this makes me wonder:

Does NTFS really offer any advantage beyond 4 Gb file size
and user/security features??? Is it perhaps less stable than FAT32?

Over 15 years, I never had a real problem with FAT/FAT32, yet with
physically 100% good drive the apparent corruption of MFT (gone
completely unnoticed by WIndows, BTW) wiped 30 Gb off NTFS
drive just like that. Plus, the MTF reserves ridiculously large
volume space just for itself. Seems like 10% of HDD is
wasted just for the priviledge of having NTFS that seems prone
to all kinds of software problems!

Would I be better off converting all of my drives to FAT32 if I have
no use for user-level permissions and disk quotas?

DK

Personally, I have had no problems with NTFS since migrating from W98 to
2000 and then to XP. I have had failing/marginal HDDs corrupt data, but that
would have been the same with FAT32. There are other things that could
corrupt your data, including memory. I recently had a system here that was
getting data corruption only on the SATA drives and it turned out to be a
failing SATA controller on a NV680i MB (which turned out to be a known issue
on that MB). If you want to go ahead and reformat the drive to FAT32 you
could give it a go, but I really doubt you will see any difference than you
would by reformatting in NTFS.


Ed