Recovery Console (desperate)

[Andy]

Here's the deal...I removed a Hitachi Travelstor 40GB from
my laptop prior to sending it back to Dell for repair. I
added a controller card to my desktop, and via a pin
changer cable, connected the drive to the new controller
card. The drive was recognized (H and I was able to
read files and data. The next day, when I started - up,
the drive was recognized, but had no size info and was
unable to be read. "The file or directory is corrupted or
unreadable" is the error that appears when I try to access
it.

I have been able to scan the drive with a recovery
program, which revealed two "unexpected (?)" spots on the
drive, but it can not recover it. It gives an error "No
valid supported file system present on the volume". I
have the recovery console ready to go, but I am hesitating
because of posts that have mentioned that FIXBOOT or
similar commands might make the data unusuable.

I would like to copy the entire drive to another, but I am
not sure the copy program can work with the drive in this
condition. Any suggestions as to how to copy it, and how
to proceed with the Recovery Console?

Thanks

 

[Richard Urban]

EasyRecovery Professional (www.ontrack.com) can recover from a drive that
has no file system as being listed. It is expensive, but you get what you
pay for.

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

On Thu, 25 Mar 2004 10:51:09 -0800, "Andy"

Here's the deal...I removed a Hitachi Travelstor 40GB from
my laptop prior to sending it back to Dell for repair. I
added a controller card to my desktop, and via a pin
changer cable, connected the drive to the new controller

Careful with those pin changers - i.e. not to get the pin connections
wrong where it plugs into the laptop HD. Kills the HD.

The drive was recognized (H and I was able to
read files and data. The next day, when I started - up,
the drive was recognized, but had no size info and was
unable to be read. "The file or directory is corrupted or
unreadable" is the error that appears when I try to access
it.

Ungood. Why did you need to send the laptop to Dell for repair, BTW?

I have been able to scan the drive with a recovery
program, which revealed two "unexpected (?)" spots on the
drive, but it can not recover it. It gives an error "No
valid supported file system present on the volume". I
have the recovery console ready to go, but I am hesitating
because of posts that have mentioned that FIXBOOT or
similar commands might make the data unusuable.

It sounds like the HD is ill, and in such cases (especially if NTFS)
I'd avoid an in-place repair as you are contemplating.

You have two problems:
- a possibly ill hard drive
- a corrupted file system

Fight those battles one at a time. First, copy the entire contents of
the HD - all physical sectors - to a known-good HD large enough to
swallow it. Then put the sick HD aside, out of use.

I usually do the above as a two-stage operation:
- BING image to image files on a host PC
- BING image from host image files to new HD

That way, I can rebuild the starting point on the new HD without
stressing the sick HD again.

Now you can work on the new HD to make sense of the partitions and
data structures, which is harder if NTFS.


This doesn't apply to you, because you have already lost HD
visability, but I normally "cherry-pick" crucial data first, *before*
I pull the image off the sick HD. I do this in case the sick HD fails
to survive the imaging process (which can take days).

To cherry-pick from FATxx, I work from DOS mode using Odi's Long File
Name Tools (free download, GoOgle it). In particular, Odi's LCopy can
dump an entire volume to a subdir, using this syntax...

LCopy D:\* E:\SickHD /A /S

....stepping over dead sectors with a minimum of retries or any "Error!
Press a key to continue" drama.

Odi's LFN tools don't work if a special driver is needed to access the
HD, so you can't preserve LFNs if pulling data off an NTFS volume from
DOS mode. I use the free ReadNTFS from www.NTFS.com to cherry-pick
from NTFS volumes; there's also a free NTFS reader TSR from
www.systeminternals.com, but it doesn't work as well and needs about
300k of DOS memory to run.

Why DOS mode? Because Windows tends to fiddle with the HDs it sees,
and can make things considerably worse if the HD is alerady dying.

I would like to copy the entire drive to another, but I am
not sure the copy program can work with the drive in this
condition. Any suggestions as to how to copy it, and how
to proceed with the Recovery Console?

RC only begins to be useful once you have the material off the sick HD

-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

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