200GB drives and Win2KPro

Greetings on and all,
I have a tale of woe, but I'll keep it as brief and painless as possible.
About 8 months ago, I bought a Seagate Barracuda 200GB IDE drive (I'm not at home at the moment, so I'm not sure if it was the ST3200021A or the 22A). Anyway, when I first installed it and partitioned it with Partition Magic v6, PM only showed 137GB.
After some surfing round the web, I found out about 48bit LBA, and I enabled that (updated the BIOS, too).
So, up until a week ago, I had 3 partitions on the drive in question.
D:\ 30GB
G:\ 100GB
H:\ 60GB
(Yes, that's only 190GB, I know! That's how much usable space you get out of a 200GB drive once it's formatted. I'm OK with that.)
So, I've been happily dumping data onto these 3 partitions for months. Suddenly, a week and a half ago, I start getting some weird things happening.
Adobe Audition (an audio editing program... used to be Cool Edit Pro) started telling me that .wav files I'd created were suddenly corrupted. Audition couldn't interpret the data. This struck me as weird for 2 reasons.
1. I'd created the files myself, and saved them in .wav format, and
2. Audition supports an amazing number of different audio file formats, and for it to say it couldn't interpret the data was unheard of (for me, at least!).
Anyway, I had this one folder where I'd been saving a bunch of .wav files. These were gym music tapes that my wife uses. They'd been recorded from cassette, and saved as 44k 16bit stereo. Each was around a half hour in length.
Suddenly, more and more of them were becoming corrupted. I decided to try and copy them to another drive/partition.
Now, the WHOLE folder refused to be copied, citing access violations and what not.
So, I thought, time to run Diskeeper. Diskeeper told me it couldn't analyze the drives as Windows had scheduled Checkdisk to run at the next boot up.
Fine. I'll reboot now then, shall I?
After a reboot (during which I saw NO checkdisk activity whatsoever, the system comes up and both G:\ and H:\ no longer exist!!!! WTF?
Not only has the folder of .wav files gone, but the whole freakin' partition has gone! All up, I lost about 60GB of data across the 2 partitions. Not happy.
I've spent a week trading e-mails with a data recovery guru called Svend Olaf Mikkelsen, and he seems to think that there is a problem with Win2000 and data storage beyond 128GB (not 137GB, which is the limit imposed by the 28bit LBA mode).
I ran EasyRecoveryPro, but it only found about 10GB of the data, and it was the data I was least concerned about getting back.
I also ran Norton AV about 5 times with the latest definition lists. Nuffin'.
Svend seems to think that this is always going to be an issue once the total data stored on the drive (irrespective of partitioning) exceeds 128GB (ie 20GB of data on D:\, 80GB of data on G:\ and anything more than 28GB of data on H:\, and so forth).
Surely, there must be something else going on here, right?
Seagate and/or Microsoft would have come out with an update/patch if the problem affected your ability to fill the drive with more than 128GB of data, wouldn't they?
Anyway, at this point, I've given up any hope of seeing that data again, but I do want to find out what is causing it, so I don't get hit by it again.
Thoughts?

Can you please attach a screen shot after performing this process:

• Go to Control Panel
• Go to Administrative Tools
• Go to Computer Management
• Go to Disk Management (under "Storage")
• Screen shot

Hopefully Windows can tell us if there is anything wrong here that could be corrected easily. Cheers.

Sure thing.
When I get home tonight, I'll do that.
Cheers,
Bruce.

Hi Bruce,

Quote:

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I've spent a week trading e-mails with a data recovery guru called Svend Olaf Mikkelsen, and he seems to think that there is a problem with Win2000 and data storage beyond 128GB (not 137GB, which is the limit imposed by the 28bit LBA mode).

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Bollix! or however you say that in svensk :D

This is purely a BIOS/MoBo issue....................Windows as you know it has no such problems.

For example, the 128/137Gb problem is the same thing, it all depends on your notation ;)

Please read this: http://support.microsoft.com/default...roduct=win2000

It sounds as if your HDD is about to die on you, please try running a diagnostics tool and let us know the result.

Johnno

Y'know what?
I only read that MS article earlier today while I was at work. And although I upgraded my BIOS when I first got the drive (and couldn't see more than 137GB), I didn't (at that stage) learn about the registry edit that was required!
I've just added the registry string (as quoted in the MS article), so maybe tht will make a difference! :)
Anyway Tim_Axe, I'll attached that jpeg you were after. Interesting, Disk Manager says it's 157GB of free space, but Partition Magic 6 reported it as 2 lots of free space (1x100GB, and 1x60GB), so PM obviously recognises something in the way of the prtitions that were there.
I'll post this, and reboot, and see if the registry string makes any difference.
Cheers,
Bruce.

Well, the good news is that your data should still be there.

The only problem is that recovering your lost partitions it will likely be difficult. (I'm not sure how to do it since I have no programs to work with partitions) Were the partitions that were lost NTFS or FAT32?

I've only had a possibly similar situation when I had my disks partitioned weirdly. For some reason LILO (I dual booted at the time) on my machine was somewhere in the middle of another partition, but it was pointed to correctly and booted fine, but when I filled up one of the disks it overwrote that part (I think I had deleted the Linux partitions but LILO was still there in now unallocated space) and my system stopped booting because another file overwrote it.


I think what happened was that your partition information became corrupted (possibly a file overwrote it because you partitioned the drives with 3rd party software and Windows didn't see the end of the partition correctly?). Windows still recognizes the disk, but it doesn't realize there are 2 partitions allocated for your G and H drives -- the free space. Since you can't afford to loose the data you can't just tell windows to re-allocate it and format it NTFS. So I'm not sure how you can recover the partiton information to make that free space useful again, though it is probably possible.

Hi Bruce,

It sounds as if your drive is just within warranty, so I would certainly get the Seagate diagnostics tools and run them just in case the HDD is failing and that was the cause of the corruption.

Cheers

:)

Thanks for the info, guys.
Tim_Axe,
The partitions were NTFS, and as for the data, well, I've pretty much given up hope of ever seeing it again. Which is a right royal PITA, but, as they say in the classics, "**** happens".

Nihil,
I'll give the Seagate tools a whirl, but I'm not sure that it's a drive failure issue. Still, got nothing (more) to lose, so what the hell? :)

I'll let you know how I go.
Cheers,
Bruce.

Hi Bruce,

You might try this afterwards:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html

here is some information about it:

http://www.sleuthkit.org/informer/sl...former-15.html

Or this:

http://www.andypryke.com/pub/Partiti...eationSoftware

Cheers

Nihil,
Thanks for those links.
I downloaded testdisk, and got in touch with Christophe via e-mail.
After a couple of e-mails, he gave me some instructions, which brought back most of the data. Some got lost, but I can live that.
Thanks heaps.
Cheers,
Bruce.

Wotcher Bruce,

It is a pleasure to try to help a bloke who gives you feedback...........that is how we learn :D

Glad to hear that it mostly worked out

Cheers,

Johnno

Wotcher?
I'm guessing this is some kind of English slang or coloquialism?
Care to elaborate? :)

Hi Audio2U,

The Urban Dictionary...

wotcher
(informal) a shortened form of "what cheer!" An exclamation; used as a greeting, especially between friends. Used mainly in London, England. Also spelled "Wotcha".

Eg

OK!
:)
Thanks for that.

Grrrrr! :(
I decided (at the prompting of a friend) to upgrade to XP.
At first, even XP couldn't see the whole 200GB of the drive, which upon investigation, I found was to be expected until I had installed SP1. I naturally went and found SP2 and installed that instead.
Now, I open up Partition Magic, and PM can see the whole 200GB.
I have wiped off every bit of data from the 200GB drive with the intention of starting from scratch. I have set up a 35GB FAT32 D drive at the beginning of the drive. Now, I want to set up an NTFS ~160GB G drive on the remaining space.
However, every time I try to set up a partition in the remaining space (irrespective of what size, what drive letter, or what file system), I get an 'error #117 Drive letter can not be identified'. At least, that's what I'm getting now. 10 minutes ago, I was getting 'error #986 Unable to find information for the specified partition'.
I'm starting to think that maybe there IS a physical problem with the drive.
Thoughts?

Hey Bruce!..............have you run the diagnostics?

Hell man, that drive will go out of warranty?

;)

Nihil,
Yeah, I did, and if I recall, SeaTools gave it a clean bill of health.
However, I think I'll run in again when I get home from work tonight.
And yeah, if it IS a physical problem, then I need to get to the bottom of it before the 12 months is up.
I'll keep ya posted.
Cheers,
Bruce.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
I got home last night, and re-ran SeaTools, whch offers a quick scan and a full scan. I ran the full scan and SeaTools gave the drive a clean bill of health.
I then downloaded Ranish Partition Manager from pricelessware.org thinking that a different partitiong program might be in order. My reasoning for this was that under XP, Partition Magic 6 installed with a warning that it might not work properly with NTFS partitions correctly under XP. It had never given me this warning under Win2KPro.
Ranish PM appeared to create 2 partitions correctly. A 30GB FAT32, and a ~160GB FAT32. However, once I rebooted into XP, only the 160GB partition was viewable! Go figure.
That's as far as I've got so far.
Any ideas?
Cheers,
Bruce.

Hey Bruce,

You should be using NTFS is you have Win2000 or XP?

Yes, I believe that you will need PM 8.0 to work with XP

I would NOT use third party partitioning crap...............nothing but a pain in the a$$ :eek:

Try doing it with Windows :)

Nihil,
I agree with you... I would prefer to format in NTFS, but Ranish PM doesn't support it.
Yeah, I'll have to upgrade to PM8.
#@#$^^&$ computers.... just one expense after another.
You said "try it with Windows".
Try WHAT with Windows? Partitioning? If so, How?
Cheers,
Bruce.

Yes, Windows does it in a simple sort of way............I cannot remember how many partitions.........4???

"Format" the drive, that should get it recognised.............you may have to use Seagate's installation tool to get your BIOS to recognise the 200Mb.

Then install Windows, it will prompt you for partitions.............and go Win2000 :) I personally am not that happy with XP............and as they are looking ahead to "Longhorn" and beyond?...........I don't think that it is getting the attention it needs?

just personal views of course

If you need more detailed help, please let me know what operating system you have chosen............I do most except XP home :D

And I will set up a machine here so I can walk you through the installation



:)

Nihil,
Thanks for the input.

Quote:

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then install Windows, it will prompt you for partitions.............and go Win2000 I personally am not that happy with XP

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The 200GB drive is not for the OS. It's purely a data drive. My first drive is fine. It's a 70GB, partitioned into a 10GB C:\ and a 60GB F:\

Quote:

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just personal views of course

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...which I second, quite frankly!

Quote:

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And I will set up a machine here so I can walk you through the installation

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No need. I've installed Win2KPro about 5000 times now! I think I've got in down pat. :)
But as it so happens, I've still got a ghost image of my Win2KPro install, so I can have it up and running within about 30 minutes when i get home tonight.

Hey, go back to that disk management thing I showed you (XP should have it too). Then either delete the volumes on that drive, or format it. Setting up a NTFS partition from there should be simple.

You can do all sorts of other weird and complicated things too, but just stick to deleting unused partitions and formatting them.

Cheers.

Bruce,

I am going to ask for an act of faith............yeah it's that bad............please rename your drives?
C & D should be on #1 and the rest on #2

Don't ask me why, but that sometimes works :confused:

I hope that will not cause too much confusion with access paths?

Johnno

Quote:

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I am going to ask for an act of faith............yeah it's that bad............please rename your drives?
C & D should be on #1 and the rest on #2

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No need! We have a result!
I got Partition Magic 8, and it's all good!
Good call, Nihil.
Thanks heaps for all the patience and effort.
I'm a happy man.
Guess the one thing I SHOULD do before I get too carried away is to write more than 140GB of data to the drive to make sure corruption isn't going to be a continuing issue.
And just FYI, I've created a 35GB FAT32 D:\ drive, and a 160GB G:\ drive.