Problem with the HDD

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October 11th, 2010, 08:49 AM
sumitprateek

Problem with the HDD

I have a 40Gig Samsung IDE HDD.

I recently upgraded to core 2 duo, and installed XP. I had 4 partitions on it 3 of 9.something gig and 4th of 8gig.

Now, my 8gig partition which contained the OS started showing problems. I tried reinstalling windows, but setup refused to format it. Formatting it to NFTS using ubuntu and then using XP installer also won't allow installation. On using Ubuntu, i tried using its partition manager, and it showed that the root file system wasn't defined. Only 2.22Gb was accessible by XP setup for installation later.

Now, by mistake, i selected the create new partition table option, which creates DOS partitions. I lost all the data in all other 9Gig partitions. Is there any way i can get that data back? Those partitions had some of my personal stuff which i might need in the future for some legal matters.
October 15th, 2010, 12:45 PM
dspeidel

I'm no sure but I think if you repartition with the same settings you had before you can recover the data. I never tried this but I think it I read somewhere.

Good luck!
-D
October 16th, 2010, 12:35 AM
nihil

If it is 40GB then it is as old as the hills................get a new drive!.... hell, I just bought two second user 160's for $30!

Set it up as a slave and then get roadkil's "unstoppable copier"............ it will extract all files or what it can, even from a damaged drive (so long as it still spins)

http://www.roadkil.net/program.php?ProgramID=29

It might take some time................and in future back important stuff up:rolleyes:
October 20th, 2010, 09:35 AM
sumitprateek

Thanks everyone.

@ nihil : I have the option of getting a Western Digital 320gig Sata one for around 15$, its only my low requirements that i'm using one. Btw, thanks for the tool, hoping it really works.
October 20th, 2010, 09:41 AM
sumitprateek

@dspeidel : Thanks. But don't remember the xact patririon size. It was 9.something gig, (i suppose 9.76, but that number isn't turning correct).
October 20th, 2010, 08:34 PM
nihil

Please be careful! as Win XP does not natively support SATA HDDs like Vista and 7 do.

If you have a 3.5" floppy drive, then this isn't a problem, and your kit sounds old enough to have one. Just copy the SATA drivers onto a 3.5" and hit F6 at the prompt when you are loading the OS. It will ask you to insert the driver disk into A:\ and it does mean a floppy drive.

If you don't have a floppy drive then turn on "compatibility mode" in the BIOS (it may be in advanced settings) until you have loaded the OS and SATA drivers.

Otherwise, leave F6 alone and let Windows do its own thing, load the SATA drivers then go into control panel and uninstal the HDD, then reboot and Windows will detect the SATA drive as such, because it now has the drivers.
October 28th, 2010, 06:46 AM
sumitprateek

Thanks anyways pal. Here's an update

I've been using R-Studio to recover data. All other data recovery sw's had been ineffective in detecting my drive's format. Using Bart PE Windows Live CD shows the drive's format as RAW.

Now here's another catastrophie which happened to me. The other hard drive, which my dad uses for his office work was being used for data recovery and running the Os. As the computer was slow, i decided to change the boot settings from msconfig utility, but there the computer got hanged. I restarted to find that boot.ini was cleared up.

I tried the old "crook" way of using the windows xp installer to copy setup files to the hdd, and expected that boot loader to compile boot.ini and hence the os boot menu to appear. But yikes, the whole thing got f***ed up. The whole disk ended up being RAW from NTFS ! Any way out of this?? And i gotta keep the files on the hard drive too.
October 28th, 2010, 08:52 PM
wiskic10_4

Heya sumitprateek

How much data are we talking about here? I can't imagine it is a massive amount if it's for "legal matters" or whatever, as most spreadsheets and document files are relatively small. Do you have any removable media? Preferably flash drive(s) or external HDD?

Quote:

All other data recovery sw's had been ineffective in detecting my drive's format. Using Bart PE Windows Live CD shows the drive's format as RAW.

What all other "recovery sw's" did you try? Did you try to boot with a Knoppix Live CD? I would definitely boot with Knoppix and see what it detects from your HDD... If it can see your files, you may copy the important ones over to a flash drive or whatever.

Quote:

I tried the old "crook" way of using the windows xp installer to copy setup files to the hdd, and expected that boot loader to compile boot.ini

Huh? :confused: Not sure what you mean by that... Do you mean that you used the Recovery Console and used the fixboot/fixmbr commands? If not, then you should have...

Quote:

But yikes, the whole thing got f***ed up. The whole disk ended up being RAW from NTFS !

What detected it as RAW? You put the HDD in another computer? Or the BartsPE :confused:

Again, I would boot w/ Knoppix, and if it can see your files, I would copy them over to a flash drive. Try that and post back here and we'll go from there.
October 29th, 2010, 06:43 AM
sumitprateek

Quote:

Originally Posted by wiskic10_4

How much data are we talking about here? I can't imagine it is a massive amount if it's for "legal matters" or whatever, as most spreadsheets and document files are relatively small. Do you have any removable media? Preferably flash drive(s) or external HDD?

Its a IDE HDD, and the data lost was around 40gig

Quote:

What all other "recovery sw's" did you try?.

I tried ubuntu live cd for accessing file directly(read the earlier posts). IT IS UNDETECTABLE AND UNREADABLE. I tried loads of recovery softwares, too many to remember. And all of them refused to detect the drive.

Quote:

Huh? :confused: Not sure what you mean by that... Do you mean that you used the Recovery Console and used the fixboot/fixmbr commands? If not, then you should have...

Tried FIXMBR on windows setup, didn't work.

Quote:

What detected it as RAW? You put the HDD in another computer? Or the BartsPE :confused:

BartPE

UPDATE
I formatteed the drive, and recovered the data. But just as when it was all going to get over, the pc hanged. I resetted the system, and ever since then the hard disk is UNDETECTABLE BY THE BIOS. What can be the issue now?? Any possible solutions??
October 29th, 2010, 11:21 AM
nihil

Hi,

Quote:

IT IS UNDETECTABLE AND UNREADABLE. I tried loads of recovery softwares, too many to remember. And all of them refused to detect the drive.

You seem to have two problems now?

1. Your system is not detecting the HDD at all, so as far as ANY recovery software goes, the drive does not exist. Also remember that most recovery applications are aimed at Windows, so they will only work with the FAT and NTFS formats. However, they should give you some sort of "unsupported" or "unrecognised" format message, rather than no drive detected.

What to do?

Boot into the BIOS setup, and down the bottom of the first screen there should be an option to detect all HDDs.......................try that.

2. Your drive, and I guess both of them? have somehow been flagged s having a non-Windows compatible format. I am assuming your father's drive is also affected, as you mention 40GB of data and your drive is only 40GB nominal capacity?

Quote:

But just as when it was all going to get over, the pc hanged. I resetted the system, and ever since then the hard disk is UNDETECTABLE BY THE BIOS.

Not a good idea, rebooting in the middle of something never is IMO........ you only do it as a last resort. The first thing you should try is Task Manager, and try to stop the application/process, which might also take several minutes.

If they are going to be effective, recovery applications will tend to take a long time, particularly with a large and fragmented drive. You must be patient as there is no way you can make them run any faster, and a myriad of opportunities to totally screw your system!:eek:

All I can suggest is that:

1. You get the BIOS to recognise the HDD.

My method is to remove the problem drive, mount it in a USB drive caddy (they are very cheap, but make sure that you get one with its own power supply and that supports larger formats, preferably up to 320 GB but at least 160GB) and attach it to a working computer.

My machines boot either Award or AMI BIOS, and they recognise it as an external USB memory device, so you can work on it.

You might try slaving it to a machine with a working HDD, but the BIOS will try to recognise it as another regular HDD and it might not work. I have found the USB caddy more reliable as the BIOS doesn't seem to look at what is mounted in it.

2. Use roadkil's unstoppable copier from a bootable CD/DVD, floppy, or USB stick drive. It doesn't care what format the HDD is or isn't in, or what OS is involved. You can also install it on the HDD of a recovery machine, if you are following that route.

It does take a VERY LONG TIME so you must be patient and let it do its own thing, even if that takes 24, 36, or 48 hours! If you had used it in the first place, as I suggested, you probably would not have your current problems as it makes no alterations to the original drive it is recovering from.

Just do not try to make it go faster..........you can't ; and don't assume it has stalled or frozen................it hasn't. It will even recover files from damaged drives (so long as they spin) which most of the other tools won't.

Good luck! and be patient, this is not a 5 minute job!