FREE NTFS Partition Repair Data Recovery Software
January 25, 2008 by Dick Correa
Filed under Data Recovery Software How To's, Partition Repair How To's
Hey Everyone! Thanks for all the positive emails and phone calls. One email from Jim L in Dallas Texas asks: “you talk about partition repair, but the software doesn’t actually repair the partition, it recovers files from it. Is there anything out there that does repair partitions?” Well Jim while most people are happy to just get their data back from a damaged partition, we do have a tool for those brave souls that want to actually REPAIR a partition.
Dick Correa our chief programmer was kind enough to release a tool he created that does in fact REPAIR NTFS partitions. This software is free to our readers and can be gotten off of our website. The link is at the bottom of this post. Keep in mind that DTI is not responsible for any data lost from misuse of this tool. It is extremely powerful. Now that the lawers are happy, here is Dick’s post:
NTFS Partition Recovery with Free Partition RecoveryAll things must start somewhere, when it comes to operating systems’; the partition sector is the single most important component in the boot sequence. When the partition sector is missing, corrupt, or set up improperly it can wreak havoc with the booting of your operating system. The partition sector is vulnerable to virus attacks, operating system anomalies, bad sector reads, and an ever increasing set of tools, fdisk included, that when used incorrectly can and will totally destroy an operating systems boot sequence.
In order to more clearly understand how the partition sector fits into the boot sequence, the following is a standard garden variety boot up.
When you turn on your computer several things happen. The first of which is the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) is executed by the CPU (Central Processing Unit). The CPU knows to load the BIOS on power up as there is a flag set at power on. The BIOS then jumps to a set of routines that will execute the POST (Power On Self Test). The POST will look at memory, some peripheral devices, and do some other house keeping procedures. The most important of these is determining the boot device. The boot device is stored in non-volatile read/write memory. If the boot device is set to a hard drive, then an industry standard interrupt 0×19 is called. This routine loads the first 512 bytes of the boot device, which in this case the hard drive, into memory location 0×7C00. The 512 bytes is a standard sector size. It then jumps to that address (0×7C00) and executes whatever it finds there.
If all goes well, the set of instructions executed will look at the partition entry data. The partition entry data is used to determine which partition is the boot partition. If it finds a boot partition in the partition entry list the instructions will then load a secondary set of instructions which the partition entry has pointed to. In the case of Windows the OS (Operating System) pre loader is now loading itself into memory. This type of OS loader is called a two phase loader and is very common. Take a look at the table below to help better understand the role of the partition sector entry data.
The format of a partition sector entry is as follows:
1.) Byte 1 Boot Partition Indicator (0×80 is bootable, 0×00 is not)
2.) Byte 2 Starting Head of the partition (255 or less)
3.) Byte 3-4 Starting Sector and Cylinder of the partition
This is set up as 10 bits for the Cylinder and
6 bits for the Sector (Sector Max 63, Cylinders Max 1024)
4.) Byte 5 File System Type (NTFS, FAT32 etc)
5.) Byte 6 Ending Head of the partition (255 or less)
6.) Byte 7-8 Ending Sector and Cylinder of the partition
This is set up as 10 bits for the Cylinder and
6 bits for the Sector (Sector Max 63, Cylinders Max 1024)
7.) Bytes 9 -12 Relative Sector to the partition sector. In other
words, where the actual partition starts.
8.) Bytes 13-16 Total sectors for this partition.
If any of this data is outside the stated parameters the partition will fail and consequently the boot sequence will stop. In order to clearly understand what happens when the partition sector is corrupt or damaged, the following is a list of scenarios.1. Boot Failure: System Halted
An error message that comes from the BIOS. Certain BIOS versions, especially the most recent revisions, take a look at the partition sector. The BIOS will perform some preliminary tests and one of the tests is the Partition Identifier. At the end of every partition sector is the value 0xAA55. If this indicator is missing then the BIOS assumes that this is not a partition sector and the aforementioned error message will be issued.
2. System reboots over and over
Although this is not an error message, it can happen if the relative sectors point to an invalid OS pre loader. A trap is set and if the data that is loaded is not executable machine most BIOS’s will reboot.
3. Invalid Partition Table
This error message comes from the partition boot code. If there are no boot devices then the boot code will enter an infinite loop after this message is displayed.
4. Error Loading Operating System
After a valid partition is found the LBA sector pointed to by the partition entry table will be loaded using INT 13. This is the operating system loader. If the code cannot be loaded into memory then the above message is normally displayed.
5. Missing Operating System
Once the operating system boot code is loaded it is checked for the 0xAA55 identifier in the same manner that the partition sector is tested. If this test fails, then the above message will be displayed.
Over the years the BIOS writers have gotten smarter, personal computer as well as operating system standards have been set and are normally followed. So many of the messages, as well as error checking is now handled by the BIOS. The messages I have mentioned are just a few, but, are very common; however, from BIOS to BIOS the messages as well as the error handling can differ greatly.
As you can clearly see the partition sector is of primary importance in the boot sequence. Without it nothing happens. In the future there may be ways to overcome the use of a partition sector, one would be to store the partition entry data in the BIOS, this would eliminate boot sector viruses as well as the possibility that the boot sector goes bad and becomes unreadable. However for now, we will work with what we have. The next segment will discuss how to do partition recovery using a simple piece of software.
How To Use The Software
Free Partition Recovery is an extremely powerful tool for anyone to use but this statement must be caveated with the fact that with power comes a degree of responsibility. In other words, use this tool with extreme caution as it can destroy your file system to the point of massive and possibly permanent data loss. That being said lets take a look at how we can put this tool to good use.
First, the software should be run from a master drive. There should be two drives in the system, your boot drive from where the software is executed, and the damaged drive. The damaged drive being the one with the corrupt or missing partition. Free Partition Recovery is designed to work on Windows XP type operating systems, so make sure that you have unzipped the file onto that type of operating system.
Once the Free Partition Recovery has been executed you will see in Figure 1.
Figure 1
The top row displays all the physical drives currently active in your system. This will also include any external devices that can be mounted as a physical block device. An example of this would be the 80 GB Maxtor USB device. Once you choose a physical drive all partition entry data will be displayed as in Figure 2.
Figure 2
The partition entry data for this particular drive gives us a clear example of a drive that has been configured with one NTFS logical drive with the standard offset of 63 sectors, start head and sector of 1 and ending cylinder of 1023. These are classic values for a normal single logical drive setup.
The other three entries are clear and not in use. These entries will be ignored by the OS loader. There is one other important item in this configuration. On the far left of Figure 2 of the first partition entry is the boot flag “No”. This indicates that this partition is ‘Not Bootable’. You can change that value buy using the drop down list (Figure 3)
Figure 3
Once you have configured all of the partition entries to reflect the correct values all you need do is press the “Write” button. You will be presented with the following message box in Figure 4. A word of caution, once you write the data down to the partition sector, you must live with it. Please exhibit extreme caution.
Figure 4
Hopefully this information as well as the software will help you recover your data. If you have any questions email support@dtidata.com or call 727-345-9665 Ext 236.
You can download the free NTFS partition repair software here. For more info about freeware data recovery visit our free data recovery software page.
We have also just released a FREEWARE solution that will save your NTFS master file table to our secure servers for possible data recovery. It acts as a remote restore point and MFT backup.
[...] This software is free to our readers and can be gotten off of our website. The link is at the bottom of this post. Keep in mind that DTI is not responsible for any data lost from misuse of this tool. It is extremely powerful. … read more [...]
Have a 400 GB External harddrive stopped working suddenly , and display unformatted harddrivewhile connecting. So try to recover data using this tool
let’s try it out
good software in use all problem
good soft ware in usre some tine and test it
pls i need a data recovery software downlodable for toshiba pc A20 series.. i’ll gladly appreciate it if my request can be granted
dear author,
HI, i quite fresh for those recovery things. But i like to ask a question with my full hope, hope authors can answer my question.
Few week ago when i want to format my disk, because of crash of software and i ensure and purposely only format the C drive which is the window file system. What i did is, i configure the HDD in BIOS and i set the sequence of booting. But when i run the window xp booting the window shown my HDD only content no partition. In addition, it cannot boot up the window whatever i had never format the HDD before.
So can i know that your product can help me recover my lost partition and can show me how-to use this genius product?
Finally I hope my question can be answered by the authors soon. Thank you.
SAM
I read your direction on using your software, am I correct in saying
that I need to have another hard drive with a bootable OS to boot up the PC and use your software on the dead or almost dead hard drive? If thats so can I make abootable usb hard drive?
I read your direction on using your software, am I correct in saying
that I need to have another hard drive with a bootable OS to boot up the PC and use your software on the dead or almost dead hard drive? If thats so can I use it with a Live cd win xp or Bart pe disc?
In answer to your question Jeff, you are absolutely correct in your assumption that you may format and install an NT type OS onto a USB device. That device in turn may be used to boot from if the BIOS of the particular motherboard supports that type of functionality.
A word of caution however when installing. In order to avoid device confusion during the install it is prudent to only have the USB device plugged in. That way the data on any other hard drives cannot be “accidentally” compromised. I myself have sometimes mistaken one device for another and fdisked, formatted, and installed the OS on the wrong drive.
Hopefully, your solution will be able to bring your compromised file system back to life. If you have any more questions, please feel free to contact me.
One last note, I am finding that your situation is not unique. There are many technicians such as yourself who are in need of a software solution that can be used on any 80×86 based machine that may not be bootable. In addition the damaged machine may not have an operating system readily available that will support a particular data recovery tool. Mores the pity.
In answer to that, I have always been an enthusiastic advocate of stand alone DOS tools. I cut my PC programming teeth on DOS 3.3 and have loved it ever since. At this point in time I am in the design phase of some tools that will be standalone, bootable from a CD, or floppy, and have comparable functionality as many popular windows tools. Using FreeDOS, DJGPP, GRX and 25 years or programming experience I believe such a wonderful suite of tools can be developed that will run on any 80×86 machine. What a wonderful legacy for such a fine operating system. Hopefully I can find the time to develop these tools.
Prior to that however, I will try and write something similar the the free partition recovery tool using the above mentioned format. I do not have a time frame for release of such a tool, however, it is in my personal schedule.
Regards,
Dick Correa
Derek,
In answer to your question, you may most certainly use the Free Partition Recovery software on a Bart PE disk.. Jacqui Best has written a wonderful article on how to do this very thing. The link is below.
http://www.dtidata.com/resourcecenter/index.php?s=bart
This article refers to our Recover It All Pro software but the Free Partition Recovery will work just as well as the software is based on the same design and implementation standards.
I hope this helps you. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.
Dick Correa
Hi, I just got a 2.5″ sata WD 120 GB 5400rpm hdd that I plan to use as an internal in my notebook. The drive makes a click x4 after powering up as external, but it’s not listed in “my computer”.
When I’m trying it as internal, I’m getting this message: “hard drive not recognized”.
I tried WD Data Lifeguard tools and the drive appears as “Generic External” when plugged in on usb post; also, Everest recognizes it.
What can I do to initialize the hard drive? Any tool to make it visible& format it?
Thanks,
Simona
How refreshing to have someone so knowledgable speak in plain english for all us ‘others’. Please, don’t ever stop.
Hello outthere!
I want to recover some datas in a non destructive way from a physical crashed drive, I just want to find these datas and transfer them to another drive. The crashed drive doesnt boot and I cant see anything on it except if I use some demo recovery tools. The drive contains bad sectors in some places and it seems to be physical damaged. Now here is why Im confused: Should I use the “Free NTFS Partition Repair Data Recovery Sofware” of yours on it or should I look somewhere else?
Im a bit confused..
Thanks for your help!
The instructions under Fig 3 say “Once you have configured all of the partition entries to reflect the correct values all you need do is press the “Write” button”. How do I know what are the correct values to enter?
did a windows update. when the computer rebooted, i got an error mesage to hit the ctl-alt-del keys. did this over and over, same result. the drive seems to be fine, all files are able to be read. can your utility help me fix this so i can boot from this drive into windows again??
Will the NTFS Repair feature handle this error ‘Inserting an indeix entry into index $o of file 25.’? I believe my C: drive NTFS suffered partial NTFS corruption following NDIS.SYS blue screen of death.
Symptom: Every time I cold boot the notebook, chkdsk will commence repair process. The screen displays ‘Inserting an indeix entry into index $o of file 25′ line after line until it said ‘Insufficient disk space to correct error in the index $o of file 25′. The Windows XP then allow me to logon but popup error message saying such and such folders is corrupted and unreadable. Some applications work fine but I noticed that while you can create/save file on C: drive, you can no longer delete nor change it. C: drive file system seems like being completely locked.
Any help is appreciated.
Well repairing the partition is not going to help because the partition is intact. If the partition was not the drive would not boot. It sounds as if you may have some bad sectors on the drive. It was also interesting when chkdsk indicated that there was not enough disk space on the drive to reallocate index allocations. Sometimes it is best to get your data off of the drive to another media before it goes bad. So, that said, I would back up whatever important data you have to another drive ( external usb, DVD, CD etc ) Then I would check the amount of space used on the drive. If you disk is totally full I would delete whatever you can live without and uninstall any programs you don’t use. The run chkdsk again. If chkdsk can not resolve you problem then I would suggest starting from scratch. Get all your data off of the drive, format the drive or even get a new one. Reinstall Windows and all of your programs, I do this once a year.
King,
After reading your message your problem exists with the file system itself and not the Master Boot record, or OS boot record. The Master File Table is corrupt and chkdsk is trying to repair. The situation with chkdsk is that it will destroy inodes and file pointers to the point where data cannot be recovered.
You sound like you may have one of two general problems. First, you may have bad sectors on the drive, and because they cannot be read it will show as a corrupt file system and chkdsk will try to run. Second, data was written to the MFT area of the file system and has corrupted the table. This can happen for so many reasons that it would not be prudent to list them here.
In order to solve this problem, I would pull the drive from the machine, place it in a USB sleeve and try to recover the data using DART for XP http://www.dtidata.com/free_data_recovery_software/DART.zip . If DART hangs then that usually means there are bad sectors on the drive, then you may want to use Speed Clone http://www.dtidata.com/free_data_recovery_software/Speed_clone_Demo.zip. To image the drive to another drive and then recover the data.
Hopefully these suggestions will help you. Good luck with your recovery, and as we always say “Don’t get eliminated!”
Dick
Thanks Dave and Dick Correa for your advice.
I am currently backing up all the data from the corrupted drive C: whilst I still have access to the system.
I did noticed disk space on C: slowly decreases from 600Mb to 300Mb as a result of inability to delete/create any file/folder nor flush the IE or Firefox cache. Evidence of disk lock being in play.
Strange is that chkdsk did not reported any bad sector nor hard error, so the disk seems to be still in good shape. But I will take your advice to offload all my data and rebuild the hard disk anew.
Before I rebuild the disk I shall give DART and Speed Clone a go and report back the finding.
Stay tune.
I have just had an unusual problem when inserting memory – and yes, i grounded myself the whole time – where the HDD boots then, it displays the WindowsXP start page – the one with the progress bar – and then reboots.
I can even call up the start menu, using F8 but it won’y any further
When i try run a repair using the XP Cd it says the HDD is unformatted, the partition is corrupted etc.,
Will this software help fix the HDD partition and boot XP correctly ?
I understand you can’t make any promises – a generalisation would be appreciative, and stop me going hysterical and insane.
Stephen,
I understand what you are going through. We will help in every way that we can! What type of computer is it? Is it a laptop or desktop? What type of hard drive is it – SATA, IDE, etc?
Do you have another computer available for recovery?
Please answer these questions and I can help you come up with a recovery game plan. The fact that your drive is recognized is a real good sign. Do not run any type of re-install or chkdisk or that could erase your existing data.
The Pc is a desktop and the HDD is an 80Gb IDE drive.
I have a couple of spare HDDs that I can install XP on
Unfortunately I’ve only got the one PC.
Re the chkdsk – don’t worry I haven’t done a thing as far as that’s concerned – my first concern is to see if there is a solution out there before i totally screw things up (laughing).
When do we get Linux version? I’m trying to find software to repair my ruined NTFS disk, that runs on Ubuntu, which is what my spare hard disk has on it. I’m not particularly wanting to repartition and reinstall just to recover some files, then just to repartition the spare disk back to ext2 and put Linux back on it…
So, Linux version?
I have/had a 400 Go external HDD with 2 Partition.I tried to create an other partition from one of the free disk space of one of the existing partition, with Partition Magic. I remember that I got an Error Massage, so I just Canceled the process, and shut down my external USB-HDD . 3 Weeks late I wanted some data from that HDD, but I get the following Massage “The disk in Drive J is not formatted…etc…”
I tried this free NTFS partition repair software, but the software only showed me 1 Partition Boot “yes” SH “0″ SS “1″ SC “0″ FS Type “FAT 16″ EH “85″ ES “15″ EC “1023″ rel Sectors “0″ Total Sectors “268435455″ the Rest is empty. I was afraid to continue so I just Pressed Exit.
Should I continue and Try it out??? but where is the second partition and both partition were ntfs Format?????
Nizar,
It looks like Partition Magic may have set up a FAT16 temporary partition, or your partition has been corrupted. The partition is 130 GB but shows as FAT16 which is not possible. In order to recreate the partition the EXACT size of both drives must be known at the sector boundary.
The Free Partition Recovery Tool only writes the data to the partition, it does not scan for valid partitions. You will need a piece of data recovery software to do that. Recover It All Professional on our website will help you recover your lost partitions.
We also offer a service where a technician will remotely login to your computer and fix the partition for you. The price for that recovery is $100.00.
I hope I have answered your questions. If you find the EXACT sector boundary for each valid partition then you can use the Free Partition Recovery tool to recover your lost partitions.
Dick Correa
Hi,
I’ve been trying to recover a Friends laptop (VIAO A170P). He was installing XP sp2 online (ouch!). Now every boot says hit Ctrl+Alt+Del. I’ve managed to get a install CD running with USB floppy and DVD. Windows see’s all 3 partitions p1 (EISA, think it has a Viao recovery image) p2 and p3. I know p2 is OS and p3 is data but all show as being free space and file system is “Unknown”. It looks like the file system got wiped out. I also am unable to Ghost an image because of bad blocks and un-flushed cache/memory? Can your utility help recover it?
Barry,
If Windows is seeing the partitions then the Free Partition Recovery tool will not be able to help as your problem is not the partition.
You are getting bad sectors on the drive and that can cause a great deal of havoc with file systems as well as the data. My advice to you is to clone the drive, pull off the data and reload your friends box.
Bad sectors is nothing to play with as all hard drives have an area on the drive to remap bad sectors. If you are getting bad sectors then that mean the bad sector remap area is full. Thats very bad.
I hope this helps you.
Dick Correa
My Gateway desktop not boot and nothing shows on the monitor at all. I was told my HDD was corrupted or damaged , so I bought another wetern digital drive and installed. Still nothing is happening. I don’t care about recovering anything from the old drive. Any sugestion as what is wrong and what to do ?
Hi,
I got this error when I tried to click on an External USB hard disk (80GB) and got this error. “The file or directory is corrupted and unrecoverable”.
It would seem the hard disk is physical okay, it’s just that I cant get at the data.
Tried running the NTFS Partition Recovery program you have made available. Still couldn’t get it to work. Would you be able to help me here.
Much appreciated…
Aibo Bebes
Papua New Guinea
I am replacing a hard disc (slave) with a larger one. I put in the 160gb disc and it shows and formats as a 3`1.4gb. How can I make the OS see the additional real estate?
Korey,
What OS are you using. Do you know what type of BIOS you have? How old is the computer?
Hi Dick!!
Very interesting stuff,great imfo. I’ve got an older 30gb Maxtor HD,that crashed ,it still spins up,but won’t boot into Windows.It asks for the system disk.It has theFat32 file system installed.i’m wondering if your PartitionRepair/Recovery Software,would work on this drive? Any or all imfo would be greatly appreciated.
Thank You In Advance Rudy L
LESEN TO ME MY D: DRIVE NTFS PARTITON OK .THEN COMPUTER RESTART OK AND MY WINDOWS CORUPT.THEN WINDOWS INSTALL C : DRIVE .AM LOOK THE D: DRIVE PARTITION UNKNOWS .MY ALL DATA D: DRIVE SAVE.WHEN D: DRIVE OPEN HE ASKED ME FORMAT PARTITION . SO U HELP ME HOW CAN DATA RECOVER HELP ME
[...] if you used WinHex to look at the total sectors of the drive and would like to use the Free Partition Recovery Tool to put the partition down to the drive you can do that also. It very simple as the fields from [...]
Hi. My problem is I did a registry cleaner and it pretty much forced me to do a system recovery with widows xp afterwards then it no longer recognized the information I have on my wd 500 gb external hard drive. It tells me to reformat the hard drive and I have about 450 gb of info stored on there. I don’t believe the hard drive is damaged but some files or something definitely is that wants me to reformat the drive. Which tool should I use and how should I use it to attempt to fix this situation so I can use the external hard drive as I previously have without having to reformat and delete the information?
Thanks,
C
Corey,
It sounds like there is an issue with the MBR of the drive now, which is common after a Windows reload. I Have not yet figured out the correlation of reinstalling Windows on one drive and losing the partition on an external drive but it happen A LOT. I could come in to your machine with LogMeIn Rescue and more then likely fix the drive back to the way it was before this happened. It is a situation where you need eyes on the raw sectors of the drive. If you like you can give me a call at 727-345-9665 ext 236 and we can discuss it further.
My scenario: I have one 1TB External HDD (Seagate – Freeagent, USB), partitioned with only one partition (NTFS). By mistake, trying to format one memory stick (using “HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool”, v 2.06, FAT32 option), I selected the HDD. After few seconds, I received an error message. Immediately, the HDD was unmounted and remounted (Win XP sp2). Obviously, appeared as “not formatted”.
The data from “FREE NTFS Partition Repair”:
Seagate| FreeAgent | Not Available| 102C| USB | 931.51 GB
Boot SH SS SC FS Type EH ES EC Rel Sectors Total Sectors
Yes 1 1 0 FAT 32 254 63 763 63 1953525105
Question: If I will change the above data to:
Boot SH SS SC FS Type EH ES EC Rel Sectors Total Sectors
No 1 1 0 NTFS 254 63 1023 63 1953525105
is possible to recover my data (about 600 GB) back?!
My scenario: I have one 1TB External HDD (Seagate – Freeagent, USB), partitioned with only one partition (NTFS). By mistake, trying to format one memory stick (using “HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool”, v 2.06, FAT32 option), I selected the HDD. After few seconds, I received an error message. Immediately, the HDD was unmounted and remounted (Win XP sp2). Obviously, appeared as “not formatted”.
The data from “FREE NTFS Partition Repair”:
Seagate| FreeAgent | Not Available| 102C| USB | 931.51 GB
Boot SH SS SC FS Type EH ES EC Rel Sectors Total Sectors
Yes 1 1 0 FAT 32 254 63 763 63 1953525105
Question: If I will change the above data to:
Boot SH SS SC FS Type EH ES EC Rel Sectors Total Sectors
No 1 1 0 NTFS 254 63 1023 63 1953525105
is possible to recover my data (about 600 GB) back?!
Thank you!
If life were as simple as your suggestion we would all be in an eternal state of bliss! However, we live in the Microsoft world and therefore there will be no joy in Muddville today.
Part of the process when you format a drive for FAT32 is that it reserves an area to store the FAT, actually two copies of the FAT. This FAT is stored at the very beginning of the drive.
When creating the FAT the area reserved is zeroed out. In other words, with a device the size of yours the first 200 to 300 MB of the drive was totally wiped clean. Thats not good. It destroys major system components as well as a possibility of the MFT being corrupted.
There is a possibility of getting your data back but it will take a trained file system recovery expert to rebuild the file system and possibly give you access to your files.
I’m sorry the partition recovery software couldn’t help you, however there is a high possibility we can recover the data remotely.
Regards,
Dick Correa
Thank you for the answer.
Fortunately, I succeeded to restore my hdd (fast: 10 min), using the information from CG Security Wiki
I don’t know if the above information is allowed on your site, but I know you’ll moderate the post. So, it’s up to you.
Anyway, thank you again for your quick and sincerely answer.
Intol,
Sure we are here to help people out and appreciate the info. Hopefully it will help out someone else who has this problem.
I To Recover my Windows From Some sevier Problems So I wanna use your Recovery Disk
Monodeep,
What operating system are you using? What kind of problems are you having?
My USB hard disk (120 GB NTFS) got corrupted by two power failures! Now, it cannot be mounted either in Linux or Windows. By checking with “testdisk” the disk is found, it shows:
Disk /dev/sda – 2199 GB / 2048 GiB – CHS 2097152 64 32, sector size=512 –
Partition table type (auto): Intel
Disk /dev/sda – 2199 GB / 2048 GiB –
Partition table type: Intel
It shows 2199 GB instead of 120 GB and checks for hours but could not find any partition, only gives “input/output” errors.
Can you help?
Debesh,
Yes we can help you. I have forwarded this to the engineer that creates all of our software Dick Correa, and am sure he will answer your questions on Monday. In the meantime you could run the demo of Recover It All and post the results of the scan here so he has as much information as he can get to help you.
When I fished recording my first mini-dvd I start the second.
But at home when I was trying to finalise the first DVD it say NO DATA
I tried several times, but still says NO DATA and cont perfor nay other operation,
Where is my 30 minues of DATA gone?
OR how to recover?
Pl help.
I tried one or two online rescue software it recongnises as audioCD with no data at all.
First Things First… DAMN!! I’ve never seen such a direct and clear cut answers/suggestions forum so far… GREAT WORK Dick and all others contributing to it… May God Bless you’ll and may your tribe increase!!! ; )
Okay now this post is gonna be quite long based on the issues I’ve seen and noticed over a period of time working with computers (No computer expert, just a guy who happens to face all sorts of issues with his computer and learned from trial and error and well reading days and nights on end (Im not exagerrating I’ve been 7 days/nights continuously reading and working installations (of course with the food and bath breaks included) sometimes from sites regarding issues that don’t give or get direct answers/solutions rather than only have so called experts rant about stuff that doesn’t pertain to the question and no solution to the issue I mean literally!!!) Most of the stuff may seem a little out of context, but then I decided to speak my mind literally on what issues I found so that this page can be seen by all sorts of people with errors of sorts and get them worked out..
First my opinion is that the BASICS of computers being the same over the years and only COMPONENTS SOFTWARE etc being developed and created without keeping the Basics in mind hasn’t really helped us computer users really rather than torturing our souls with the numerous incompatibility issues etc and lack of information on the specified devices or workarounds for overcoming them being mentioned either in manuals etc. being a problem…
I hope the following info I put up is useful for many who search for them…
THE FIRST and most important step that is partitioning a system though supposed to be a simple task rather looks more complicated especially when doing dual/multiple OS boots and when you find after installing and partitioning that there is overlapping of sectors and partition size errors being displayed at the end of them all… (Does the free partition software rectify the geometries and change them according to the correct cluster/sector size etc and make the disks and partitions visible?) or does changing the BIOS settings to LBA sort them out?
Many a time we come to know very late in partitioning that there is a 137 gb limit for Windows OS and that there is an option in the BIOS where in when changed from Native to LBA mode will display the disk sizes in its entirety(or well up to what can be used)… that too after everything has been partitioned and done with and all our data also mounted (And sometimes simple issues like a firmware detecting a CMOS battery failure and on replacement can sometimes reset and not let one of the disks be seen again as partitioned before.) What would be interesting is that if there was a way in which we could calculate appropriate partition sizes according to cluster/sector size in a way so that it does not cause errors or confusion on the hard drive and also in utilizing the space to the fullest…(Say 160 GB disk or 500 GB disk) based on size… I am yet to see a site that gives DIRECT information to that question. Or if LBA mode does not care about what size partition we enter and whether the partition sizes then have no issues… Please let me know if there is a way because I’m planning to do a reformat from scratch based on your inputs… I actually want to have a quad boot!!!
DISK 1 (160 GB)Seagate SATA
C: win 2000 SP4 16GB
D: win XPSP3 50 GB
E: Win Vista Ultimate SP1 45 GB
F: LINUX 30 GB (Whichever version of Linux they finally claim as the most user friendly and best and for someone who wants to take a peep at how Linux is…looks like by the time they (forums/Linux users) decide I’ll be DEAD!!!)
G: OS testing partition 8/9 GB(whatever space is left)
Is there a possibility wherein I can Have the last drive where all my programs can be installed in one partition like the 8GB) and they can commonly be used by the OS’ instead of having to Install them repeatedly on each OS…
If someone could device something like this they would certainly be great!! PROGRAMMERS are you’ll listening??!!!
Many Dual boot/Multiple boot users might even start worshiping them!! ; )
DISK 2 (500 GB) Seagate SATA
H: Movies 200 GB
I: Music(Videos/Songs) 200 GB
J: Setups/Docs 65 GB
RAM issues… People brag about stuff like I’ve got 4 gb RAM, 6 gb RAM or 8 gb etc… Little Did I know/or they may not be knowing that though motherboards can support that memory(mine being DG965RY with 4 RAM slots ) that THEY CANNOT BE USED by the OS or the applications because of the 3.2 gb limit where in they claim 2gb/2gb split for kernel and blah de blah blah(doesnt make sense since(3.2) but makes sense availability of only 2 gb sticks 2×2 =4) so whatever put above is not going to be utilized by the system (not everyone has 64 bit systems Im sure… More importantly physical memory above that limit is found more in server environments… Even on using the PAE \3gb switch no use seeing the RAM when it cant be USED!!! I have 4 GB… sadly…
Note: Vista does not install when u have more than 2 gb on your computer…
AUDIO/VIDEO drivers issues… Most manufacturers literally don’t have proper drivers… Microsoft LIKES the signed ones whereas the unsigned ones work on an alternative basis… So most of your devices decide to work or not work when they feel like it… Another thing I would like to mention Viewsonic Monitor drivers sometimes work on the first install later they dont display the resolution and go back to 1240×768 (1440×900 being the correct)
Intel Audio drivers kill one and all… Computers here in India have Front Panel Audio dongles of AC97 type connectors where as the motherboard has HD headers and support… and Intel removed the one working driver 5.10.5208_XP32_XP64_MCE_2K_AC97_STACGUI.EXE from its site… beats me what they were thinking or may be they dont have that info…
ASUS needs a BIOS change from Advanced\Chipset\South Bridge Configuration\Front Panel Support Type [HD] to [AC97] so that front audio panels can work (mostly the mic issues)
Webcam drivers too are seldom a problem… TV tuner cards come with its screen flickering issues…
These are some issues I would like to mention as of now… All suggestions/info could also be sent to me at my email id (REMOVED BY ADMIN) with a detailed answer if you think that you’ll be elongating the forum space… Would definitely be appreciated though I don’t have any issues in coming back to this page and reading them… I for one know that most of the above stated issues are faced by many using computers today and they can rather come here to a bang on target site and get a proper answer from you’ll than wasting their time reading long lists of crap from forums that don’t know S#*T… Thanks once again and all the best…
oh and HAPPY THANKSGIVING !!!
Michael,
I have forwarded this to one of our engineers and he will be answering it shortly!
HI all love your site have problem run xp on intell P/4 WAS USEING THE OTHER DAY AND SYSTEM CRASHED BLUE SCREEN when i tryed to restart keeped saying curruped patition or damaged hardrive, so i tryed boot disk same thing syestem recovery trys to load half way then stops and tells me it can not read hard drive, took hard drive out of computer and put old one i had in computer and computer started ok, so i put damaged hardrive in external hardrive case and hooked it up to now runing computer and when i go to see if i can acese hardrive in external , it say that there is 0 data on it dont know what to do next can you help
kind regards terry davies
Michael,
I am going to try and approach this in an orderly fashion, however, most of your post does not ask a direct question. The partitioning question is no problem, however the other two comments are not my area and I cannot intelligently comment on them. This is a data recovery forum and although we have a free form type format, it is still only about data recovery and file systems.
That being said, the criteria that Microsoft uses when partitioning a drive is as follows.
The boot sector always resides at sector zero, this is and industry requirement and not from Microsoft. All OS boot partitions reside on a head boundary. A brief explanation is in order here. In the past there was a cylinder, head, sector layout for hard drives. This comes from before LBA addressing and when drives were extremely slow. It was always advantageous that when a drive did a seek it would do as much work as possible while it was out on the platter since seek times were horrible. So, in a single platter, dual head drive on bootup the drive would seek to Cylinder 0, Head 0, and Sector 1, read the bootstrap code at that address and execute it. The bootstrap would have a table that included where the OS boot data was located. Instead of seeking to a new area on the drive, the drive would just switch heads and read from Cylinder 0, Head 1, Sector 1. That is where the OS boot record would normally be. In other words, it is by design that you lose the first 63 sectors of a drive. In addition, every additional partition will start on a head boundary, so again you lose 63 sectors. If you are using extended partitions you will lose 126 sectors as one starts on head boundary 1 and the other starts on head boundary 0.
There is no way to avoid this, and even after LBA addressing was instituted and drive platter and head numbers became irrelevant Microsoft, and the industry as a whole, kept this formula. I for one am glad as it makes data recovery much easier when there are a set of rules and these rules can be applied when looking for file system components.
In reference to partition sizes all partitions end on head 254. The tools that create a partition know that and so when you type in you want your drive ‘C’ to be a 16 GB partition the following formula is used.
There are 63 sectors per track, and 255 tracks per cylinder. There are 2048 sectors per megabyte of storage and 2097152 sectors per gigabyte of storage. Multiply 63 sectors time 255 tracks you get 16065 sectors per cylinder. You want 16 GB, so you multiply 16 time 2097152 and that equals 33554432 sectors. Now we divide 33554432 sectors by 16065 and we get 2088.666791 cylinders. Truncate the value to 2088 and then take that value and multiply that times 16065 and that value is the actual space Microsoft will allot you for your partition. In this case 15.99489212 GB of allocated partition space. Sometimes fdisk will do something weird to optimize the storage but this calculation is fairly close.
In reference to the cluster size the smaller the cluster more of the disk is used, however, you sacrifice speed for small cluster sizes for two reasons. How the OS buffers depending on cluster size and secondly smaller clusters tend to fragment more as it is easier to use all the space when the areas you can store things in is smaller. In other words it is easier to store a mouse than an elephant.
That’s about it, I wish I could help you with your other topics, however, I try not to comment on things I know very little about.
Hope this helps you out.
Dick
Terrence,
It sounds like you have bad sectors on the drive. You can either try to run some data recovery software on your drive as a USB device, or you can clone the drive onto another drive and the try to read it. However, both of these suggestions can make the drive problem much worse. The software will force retries on an area of the drive that is already very sensitive to destruction and can actually destory data. Cloning the drive has the same affect and sometimes can be worse than the data recovery software.
We have special equipment and specialized software to handle this type of situation.
Hope this helps,
Dick
HI and thank you for your fast responce, i have tryed to recover whith my xp factory recovery disks and all was going well till the last disk it came up blue screen again but difrent one , it says that there is a damaged or currupt file \system 32\ hal dll and i should repair or replace it but do not no how to do this have tryed full system recovery again but get the same thing,it all so came up with some tec stuff that means little to me so thought i would inclued it also
0X0000007A 0XE122E414, OXC000000E 0XBF8FC8F, O11D58860
win32k.sys -BF8F5C8F Base at BF800000 Date stamp 3b7de698
Kernel _DATA_INPAGE ERROR
not to sure what it all means but was hopeing you could help me further with problem, as i live hundreds of miles out any town i need to try and get computer going as i need it for work i am very gratefull for your help so far it is very refreshing to know people like you mob are out there thank you if you think this is a problem that can not be fixed from home please let me know and will stop trying, it only been three days since problem started but have been working on fixing it for the whole three days and advice would be great thank you again
kind regards Terry davies
sorry file name did not type out in full it is \system 32 \hal dll
terrence,
Your drive has bad area’s on it that will not allow the reload of your operating system. I would venture to guess that the disks you are trying to use for the system restore are not actually windows disk but disks that allow access to the “recovery partition” of the hard drive. Many manufacturers use this method now. Since the drive is going bad it would be impossible for the disks to read from the bad area of your hard drive. I would recommend getting a new drive and loading an operating system on it. You should then be able to slave this bad drive into the machine and move any valuable data off if it is not too far gone.
Thank you Jacqui how refreshing it is to find people that want to help you thank you very much you have renewed my faith in online help.
since i last posted i was able to reformat bad drive and some what restore it now if i plug drive in as secondry drive from my old good drive i can accese it allthough i have lost all data my main aim now is to try and save bad drive if posible as new drives are not cheap and being a drouht strickin farmer in australia every cent counts, i can accese drive from my good drive and it seems fine windows is reinstalled it looks ok I performed reg scan and fix on bad drive but when i plug it in as main drive i get screen that says KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE ERROR the Windows root >\ system 32 \hal dll error seems to have been fixed but this new kernel error has come up , i apolagise for been such a pain, do you think or can you recomend a program that might fix this or should i do as you sugested and get new drive, when i purchast PC i it did not come with windows XP install cd it was just on system ? i thank you again for your time and help and look forwards to hereing from you
kind regards terry davies
terrence,
I wish I had better news, but all of the problems you are having are indicative of the drive going and full failure being imminent. It is unfortunate but when a drive starts to obtain bad sectors the problem usually grows exponentially because the bad sectors are usually due to the loss of magnetism on the drive which continues to replicate once it starts to occur. Because you are in Australia I can not recommend and cheap distributors of hard drives but I would venture to guess you may be able to pick up an 40-80 gig for about $25-$50 USD. I am sorry I could not be of more help.
Hi and thank you Jacqui you are a gem and thankyou every one eles for all your help, what a great mob of people you are i very much apreciate your help i can not thank you enough, if there is anything i can do for you please do not hesitate to let me know i will bend over backwards to pay you back thank you, at least now i can stop trying to fix hard drive and get on with it i will purches new one when i get to town it is a some what of a relief as i was getting frustrate buggering aroud with it and was very close to trowing hard drive down the paddock and letting the horses play with it, but its all good now thanks to you and your good advice, as i did not have a clue where to start or finish thank you again, and dont forget if i can help you in any small way just let me know (email address removed by admin) I wish you all a very happy and safe xmass and a great new year, my door is always open and there is a feed on the table, all the best your friend in Australia Terry Davies
To Michael on the wish to multi boot on your hard drive!
I have found a link for you and others as I have been reading heaps on multi boot up hard drives.
This Linux person has succesfully booted on 4 hard drives of two 200 gig and two 3oo gig hard drives 147 operating systems.
Why ? why not same as climbing a mountain fixing hard drive issues ect.
All \Windows must be on main partitions of which there are 4 per hard drive all other Linux >> Unix >> ect are on extended partitions,
It is best to read lots and go over it agai nand again im about to try it on two 500gig hard drives IDE ones for the time being.
I am going to install as directed in sequance my DOS 6.2 >> Windows 95 >> XP >> Vista>>> then as many Linux distros that I can install and use.
I just like to be able to understand operating systems a little better and how to play with other software to see the Pros and Cons of each.
Here is the link to the forum post
Cheers Chrome
HI, this is hopefully an easy fix
New additional 1TB drive formatted in XP NTFS, k=40gb, the rest on L drive. K is empty, added data to L. On restart, L vanished from explorer (K still there – 40gb) and disk management shows a 1TB healthy formatted K drive with no partitions. Tried restarts, etc. no difference – OS has since been reinstalled for other reasons. The data is still there according to a trial version of a data recovery program. What happened? can a repair to the drive work? Thanks!
David,
It is likely I could repair this drive back to how it was before what happened.. happened. It would be a remote logical recovery. It is likely that the partition got smoked.. how I have no clue. I would be happy to walk you through a few things if you want to give me a call 727-345-9665 ext 236
Hi, I have an Acer Laptop that had 3 partitions on a 320G hitahi SATA drive I imaged off the original 80 gig drive to make room for a multi-boot linux install. Here are the 3 partitions. The first was a hidden partition used by Acer to backup the factory defaults. The second was a FAT32 Vista boot partition (C:) and the third was an NTFS data partition(D:). All 3 were primary partitions with the second set as bootable.
Where the trouble began was that I wanted to remove the first hidden partition and resize the two others. I did this using GParted Live CD as it was simple and effective and worked better than my other tool Partition Commander for this. Upon reboot I couldn’t get into my windows desktop. Got into windows but the partition changes swapped drive letters and crippled the OS to a degree. Researched online and found I needed their Vista Recovery CD to fix these issues due to new boot loader structures in Vista. I used this and it appeared to fix the problem because I booted just fine and could get to everything but then the D drive was missing. The Windows drive managment could see it but the volume label was missing and the only option was Format. At this point I decided to cut my losses.
So, I decided to set everything back the way it was. I rebooted in GParted Live. Re-created the first hidden partition and re-sized everything back the way it was. Then I rebooted into Partition Commander and mistakenly used the reset generic MBR option.DOH! Now both Windows partitions are no longer seen as FAT32 and NTFS like they were and the Vista recovery disk can’t see any copy of Vista to fix (Gulp) and the computer won’t boot. I know the data is still there and hope just fixing the MBR or Partition table(s) will correct this. Right now these partitions look like FAT and Other and don’t appear to have a filesystem is any of the tools I look at them with. How do you suggest I go about getting these 2 partitions back or is it a lost cause?
Todd,
I cant be sure without eyes on the drive, if you would like you can call me and we can set up a time for me to remote in to your pc and take a look at the drive. No cost for me to take look only would cost if I fix it but would allow me to better figure out what can be done to fix the drive enough for you to be able to reload Vista becuase you definitely need access to the Vista load on the box to be able to fix this.
I have an NTFS drive that has died & I am hoping for some insight on what I can do to recover information from it. This is not a boot device. This is all happening on a Windows XP (sp3) system that has 3 physical drives in it & 1 USB drive attached (1 160Gb, and 2 80Gb) . All drives are NTFS. I have lost access to a physical drive (80Gb) that is partitioned in 2 parts.
I was in the process of preparing files to move to a new computer (of course) and had just loaded a copy of Symantec’s Save & Restore. After I re-booted, the system said that delayed write to $MFT had failed and data bad been corrupted. At the time I could still see the hard drive in XPs manage drives & I could still see the 2 parttions. In file manager I could see the 2 partitions shown as disks & the folder tree would expand, but if you clicked on anything below the immediate 1st level of the folder tree the system said no access.
I have tried removal of the Symantec s/w thinking maybe it put a driver or something on the device, but that had no effect & on re-boot I can still see the partitions in file manager, but drive manager does not recognize that the disk is connected (neither partition shows) and now I can’t see any of the folder tree in file manager.
Looking at this site & several other data recovery sites I think the MFT has become corrupted. I have a 23Gb directory of Photos that I REALLY would like to recover from one of the partitions on this. I have not tried any recovery s/w yet. I ran a product called easeus data recovery in read mode & at 1st it could see the lost partitions in partition recovery mode also, but then it also lost the ability to see them – w/o access to the partitions it is lost…
If it matters, there are 2 partitions on the drive that is lost. One is a boot partition for a dual boot config, the other is a logical partition that has the data I lost on it. Both partitions are for WinXP. Out of concern that I will screw something else up I have not tried to boot under the boot partition – not sure it would if the MFT is in fact corrupt.
Any help or suggestions would be Greatly appreciated!
Having run Partition Magic I discovered several errors on the three partitions located on my laptop. Here’s the error log….hopefully someone here will know of a fix…I’m hoping to get the partitions all sorted out so that I can install Windows 7b on a seperate partition using a dual-boot setup….
Thanks in advance for any assistance!
————-
Symantec PartitionInfo 8.0 — Windows NT/2000 Version
Date Generated: 01/11/09 21:19:32
Copyright (c)1994-2004, Symantec Corporation
Permission is granted for this utility to be freely copied so long
as it is not modified in any way. All other rights are reserved.
Symantec, makers of Norton PartitionMagic(r), Drive Image(tm), and DriveCopy(tm), can be reached at:
Voice: 801-437-8900
Fax: 801-226-8941
Web site: http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/“> tech support
General System Information:
Total Physical Memory (bytes): 2,112,065,536
Used Physical Memory: (bytes): 742,260,736
Maximum Page File Size: (bytes): 4,047,597,568
Current Page File Size: (bytes): 831,254,528
===========================================================================================================
Disk Geometry Information for Disk 1: 15505 Cylinders, 240 Heads, 63 Sectors/Track
System PartSect # Boot BCyl Head Sect FS ECyl Head Sect StartSect NumSects
===========================================================================================================
0 0 80 0 1 1 07 1023 239 63 63 181,757,457
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
0 0 80 0 1 1 07 12020 239 63 63 181757457
0 1 00 1023 239 63 07 1023 239 63 181,743,616 40,973,984
Info: Begin C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
0 1 00 12020 19 20 07 14729 239 63 181743616 40973984
Error #105: Partition didn’t begin on head boundary.
ucBeginHead expected to be 0 or 1, not 19.
Error #106: Partition didn’t begin on head boundary.
ucBeginSector expected to be 1, not 20.
0 2 00 1023 239 63 12 1023 239 63 222,717,600 11,718,000
Info: Begin C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
0 2 00 14730 0 1 12 15504 239 63 222717600 11718000
===========================================================================================================
Partition Information for Disk 1: 114,470.5 Megabytes
Volume PartType Status Size MB PartSect # StartSect TotalSects
===========================================================================================================
C: NTFS Pri,Boot 88,748.8 0 0 63 181,757,457
E: NTFS Pri 20,006.8 0 1 181,743,616 40,973,984
Error #113: Primary partition starting at 181743616 overlaps previous partition.
Utility Pri 5,721.7 0 2 222,717,600 11,718,000
===========================================================================================================
Boot Record for drive C: (Drive: 1, Starting sector: 63, Type: NTFS)
===========================================================================================================
1. Jump: EB 52 90
2. OEM Name: NTFS
3. Bytes per Sector: 512
4. Sectors per Cluster: 8
5. Reserved Sectors: 0
6. Number of FATs: 0
7. Root Dir Entries: 0
8. Total Sectors: 0
9. Media Descriptor: 0xF8
10. Sectors per FAT: 0
11. Sectors per Track: 63 (0×3F)
12. Number of Heads: 240 (0xF0)
13. Hidden Sectors: 63 (0×3F)
14. Total Sectors (>32MB): 0 (0×0)
15. Unused: 0×80008000
16. Total NTFS Sectors: 181743272
17. MFT Start Cluster: 786432
18. MFT Mirror Start Clust: 13919846
19. Clusters per FRS: 246
20. Clusters per Index Blk: 1
21. Serial Number: 0xD2F4D2D8F4D2BE43
22. Checksum: 0 (0×0)
23. Boot Signature: 0xAA55
===========================================================================================================
Boot Record for drive E: (Drive: 1, Starting sector: 181,743,616, Type: NTFS)
===========================================================================================================
1. Jump: EB 52 90
2. OEM Name: NTFS
3. Bytes per Sector: 512
4. Sectors per Cluster: 8
5. Reserved Sectors: 0
6. Number of FATs: 0
7. Root Dir Entries: 0
8. Total Sectors: 0
9. Media Descriptor: 0xF8
10. Sectors per FAT: 0
11. Sectors per Track: 63 (0×3F)
12. Number of Heads: 240 (0xF0)
13. Hidden Sectors: 181743616 (0xAD53000)
14. Total Sectors (>32MB): 0 (0×0)
15. Unused: 0×80008000
16. Total NTFS Sectors: 40972287
17. MFT Start Cluster: 786432
18. MFT Mirror Start Clust: 2560767
19. Clusters per FRS: 246
20. Clusters per Index Blk: 1
21. Serial Number: 0xECCC3464CC342B6A
22. Checksum: 0 (0×0)
23. Boot Signature: 0xAA55
===========================================================================================================
Boot Record for drive *: (Drive: 1, Starting sector: 222,717,600, Type: FAT)
===========================================================================================================
1. Jump: EB 58 90
2. OEM Name: MSDOS5.0
3. Bytes per Sector: 512
4. Sectors per Cluster: 8
5. Reserved Sectors: 36
6. Number of FAT’s: 2
7. Root Dir Entries: 0
8. Total Sectors: 0 (0×0)
9. Media Descriptor: 0xF8
10. Sectors per FAT: 0
11. Sectors per Track: 63 (0×3F)
12. Number of Heads: 240 (0xF0)
13. Hidden Sectors: 222717600 (0xD4666A0)
14. Big Total Sectors: 11718000 (0xB2CD70)
15. Drive ID: 0×9E
16. Dirty Flag: 0×2C
17. Extended boot Sig: 0×00
18. Serial Number: 0×00000000
19. Volume Name:
20. File System Type:
21. Boot Signature: 0xAA55
Interesting reading. I came to this site from a link in Google when searching for why a drive had sector 63 (and ONLY #63) become unreadable in the MBR area. I’m kinda wishing that my drive was formatted as FAT32 in the first partition since I know how to get it back using “diskedit” from Norton’s old MS-DOS toolset. Over the last 5 or so years, I’ve found myself using Windows programs or bootable CDs that do the same thing, with a much faster transfer rate thanks to a larger cache.
A USB-to-IDE adapter has become essential when fixing PCs, it seems. I’ve got some 2.5″ to 3.5″ converters but those aren’t nearly as convenient nor do they have keyed connectors most of the time… Which is a shame.
Is it normal for the first sector of the first partition to just fail like that? It’s really weird because I haven’t had other sectors do the same on that drive. I can access the second partition just fine, and oddly, Windows go so far as to give me the NTLDR error, and offer to let me go to safe mode. It just can’t load NTLDR’s binary image. I guess I’m going to check the S.M.A.R.T. records on the drive and continue getting the files off the second partition. Luckily I put my “Documents and Settings” folder on the 2nd partition. Heh, clever me.
Too bad that I now have to try to guess the ending sector of the partition so that a rebuild using the disk image/virtual drive method will work. Since I know the start of the 2nd partition, I can work backwards, but is there some (mathematical) way to verify if I got it right? The partition I think is NTFS, but I’ll need to double check. I may have another copy of this drive’s MBR from before I cloned the old laptop’s drive but it’s likely changed since I added the second partition into the extra space? Or is only the first 2 sectors modified and sectors 63-64 are left alone?
Went like this: Laptop came with 30GB drive, used a boot CD to clone it to an 80GB drive. Added a second partition (NTFS) to take up the rest. Made a list of all applications and backed up ‘Windows/Program Files/Documents and Settings’ folders. Installed newer version of Windows into another folder and deleted the older one after everything was working. Moved ‘Documents and Settings’ to 2nd partition and used Registry Replacer to ‘fix’ it so that it works. Yes, I know now to use a slipstreamed installer CD but back then… heh I learned a lot about Windows XP after that fiasco.
I’m thinking that I should be hunting down my old drive’s image files ASAP. I didn’t even remember having the image until now! Thanks for the great site, Joe
Michael and to Dick Correa ,
I have left info here before about multi boot operating systems.
Go to Justlinux with a lot of reading (I have done) I have bought two 500gb hard drives ide an two 750 hard drives.
With this hardware I have found how you can put a bootloader into the very first part of a hard drive makes no differance which one but then boot up to 147 operating systems1
But like I said there is a lot of reading on “Installing 147 operating systems or more”
Also you have on the Primary partitions any of Microsift Operating Systems total amout is 4 choices, say Dos 6.2 – Windoes me or 98 – xp – vista,
then you can install in the other 143 operating systems in Linus / Soloris ect with a Single Swap – Single Home Folder.
But READ ALL THE INFO BEFORE TRYING.
It is very simple and why (why not
)
Hope this helps some people and even make this company learn some new stuff as always man made or should I say human made stuff is bound to stuff up wether we like it or not.
Cheers Chrome
Thanks for the info! I can’t imagine needing 147 operating systems, but maybe the technicians might. I would like to be able to switch between operating systems without having to reboot the machine, now that would be cool : )
VMWare player… Slow but it works. ’nuff said.
Maxtor 120 GB (6Y120P0) formatted NTFS, single partition. I accidently deleted the partition with qparted (thinking I was deleting a USB drive).
Ideally I’d like to restore it to bootable w/all previously installed programs operating, all data still available, etc. I have the free NTFS partition repair… software. The only thing it doesn’t show is the total number of sectors. Do I need to provide that info before I “write” the repair data to the drive? If so, how do I calculate it? MFG drive specs show Logical CHS as 16383/16/63. I cannot find the total number of sectors on the manufacturer’s site.
If I cannot restore the drive, what is the best way to recover the data?
Thanks
Joe
Hello, I have a hp pavilion 533w with windows xp home. My problem is I tried to do a complete system recovery using the hp system recovery and all it shows is recovery partition not found. When I do a f10 boot it shows restore.log missing and then c:\minint\system32\restore.log missing I just want to restore that computer back to the way bought it 7 years ago, it had a trojan that i had removed by circuit city. I don’t do much with it but surf the net
I want creat a recovery disk of my laptop installed win xp & supported drivers and other softwares how i can creat a recovery bootable disk of total image of drive C: kindly suggest me.
Dillip,
The only software I know that would be able to do that .. and WORK.. is Acronis.
Howard,
Could be that Somewhere along the line someone removed that recovery partition on you. I would call HP and request an OS cd. This is one of the squeaky wheel situations.. they may tell you no at first.. be persistent.
Joe,
I wrote and article to figure out total sectors
http://www.dtidata.com/resourcecenter/2008/10/13/how-to-replace-a-partition-on-a-single-partition-drive/
Try that lemme know if it works
I had an unregistered copy of XP pro. It forced me to upgrade to a legal copy of XP. The problem is that I could only spring for XP Home. I now have twooption when booting for booting, and have lost access to the previous 30GB of my HD. (I now have a limited 10GB available partiton. These are NTFS partitions. How can I access my first 30GB under XP home?
I had windows corruption and try to do recovery with -R option after booting from CD but no joy. I installed windows in anoter directory ie c:\window and now from the bootloader i can go to the windows i installed but not to the previous version.
I have data on it and want to recover. The partition shows healthy but I cannot assign a drive letter or enable it.
When I boot again now from CD and with -R optioon and with utilities both partition shows good and healthy
How can I recover my previous windows XP and recover the data.
Thanks in advance.
I did a very stupid thing, I was in process of re-install windows XP pro to my laptop and forgot I had my external drive still connected. Of course I was doing this at 3AM and was not clear int the head. My problem is when ask to delete the partition I did, but deleted my external drive and not my laptop one, good new I think is that I did not format. I have about 300G of information that I need to recover. Anyway I can restore the partition and keep my data. I’m just getting back to work too so a free or very cheap solution would be nice.
D
ditto for me
darian1007 on March 25th, 2009 3:32 pm
April 3rd, 2009
00:40 hr is my mistake event, and I was exhausted at the time.
Hundreds of OS installs on all kinds of boxes and over networks; and this one time I thought I was looking at a 2ndary factory partition, after cherry picking files and bkng up to my 250GB USB Seagate. Clicked it into the void life? I think so. I am moving on and hope find out if your app will recover the partition. I will let you know
Darian and Othello,
The probelm you are going to run in to is that you will need the exact size or sizes of the paritions that were deleted. I have a walkthrough on the blog with the #’s you need to punch into our software to write down the partition information.
How To Replace Partition on a single partition hard drive
Write down any settings that are there BEFORE you change anything, that way if it doesnt work at least you can put it back the way it was.
Weird Problem:
I was running my PC, just fine then realized my CPU was pumping at 190deg F, for a while the computer would boggle up and just not do anything and then a couple of seconds later it would just pick back up where it left off. I was in the process of doing a Disc Cleanup and had to cancel to do a reboot. I turned my PC back on and my computer started rebooting for no reason. I tried using safemode but it still would not boot. Then i tried using the option of rebooting with last known configuration and the computer would finally get to the load screen. But would stop within a couple of seconds and reboot. I then hooked up my drive to my friends computer as a slave, and the computer is showing the slave as unformatted and there is no space being used. 74g free with 74g max. I figured there might be a partition issue so i recovered the partition with the tool. No change. For a while i thought well maybe it was because the CPU was so hot it caused problems, but now being my friends computer is in perfect shape, there has to be something wrong with the harddrive. I could use a data transfer program and get my data back, but i am still curious as to what happened with the drive.
Now when i pull up properties on the drive, it shows 0/0 free and used space. using Computer Managment and Disk Managment the drive is showing Max 74/Free 74 space, and the drive is set to active. i cannot access anything in the drive because the computer is telling me the drive is not formatted but i know it is.
Im worried, i have done my best in trying to explain the details so you can better understand what is going on. Thankyou
-David-
David,
This is a very common problem. You can either run our software Recover It All which has a demo version on that page. Or we could remote in and restore your files that way. Most cases like this are under $100, learn more here: fast data recovery
I had an ex-b/f put a second partition on my computer so he could monitor my moves as well as hide his own… How do i change everything to make it back to its original factory state? I am only a user not the administrator, its currently on ntfs system with self installing files… Any help would be greatly appreciated….
I was using a video editing software that was reading/writing to my external disk (put a internal in a enclosure). I lost power and when I got everything back, I saw my drive listed in windows explorer. However, the drive name is lost. When I click on it, it says the file system is corrupted or damaged. When I drive chkdsk, it says direct access is not possible.
I am sure the files are intact, just my directory listing is damaged. Will this software fix this scenario too?
Thanks
it may be unic one
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There will be only question,I HAVE 7 MONTHS OLD wINDOWS VISTA,about a week ago I triad to install new program,but I couldn’ becouse,there was no driver E, PLEASSE HELP ME SOLVE THIS PROBLEM Iam waiting fot solution.
thank you
Marian Wnuk
I have a WD Passport Elite external HDD which was recently connected to my laptop. While the laptop was shutting down, and installing MS updates, my youngest unplugged it. Being helpful, his sitter plugged it back in and told me “some kind of error message popped up”. Now the drive is non-responsive, Windows doesn’t recongnize it and the recovery software I’ve tried to use says my 500 GB drive is now a 2199 GB drive.
I’m a DJ and had my music library on the drive along with other files that have disappeared into the ether. Any suggestions on resurrecting the drive?
Thanks for any help you can offer.
Best Regards,
Bill Brado
I have Widowa Vista and Juno internet provider.For past few monts Itried to install Norton antyvirus program without luck,also I HAVE VIRUS IN MY COMPUTER,PLEASE CAN YOU HELP ME TI SOLVE MY PROBLEM? YHANK YOU SINCERELY
marian wnuk
I have Widowa Vista and Juno internet provider.For past few monts Itried to install Norton antyvirus program without luck,also I HAVE VIRUS IN MY COMPUTER,PLEASE CAN YOU HELP ME TI SOLVE MY problem,thank you SINCERELY
marian wnuk
Thank you very much for teh NTFS Partition Repair Data Recovery Software.
I was able to get back a Western Digital drive that I’d stupidly deleted the partition from, since my PC would never boot up unless is was plugged into the USB port.
Anyway, deleting the partition in Disk Management made it so I could not get to the files. Now I can do my backups again and all is well. Thanks again!
Hi.
This is the scenario:
1) I have an external HDD (simpledrive 250KG), its HDD is wroken
2) IMy desktop PC has a second HDD 160GB, it was working fine. It has 4 partitions.
3) I take off the 160 GB HDD from the destop PC and replace the 250GB HDD of the external drive
I did all alone, without any help, I was proud of myself !!!!. But of course something wrong happend …..
4) After turned on the external drive a got a message (don’t remember it), it ask me
to partition the 160GB HDD.
I answer YES. After this a got a message to format the HDD, of course I didn’t format it.
5) Trying to solve the problem, I re-instaledl the HDD on the desktop PC and also get a message to format the HDD
The question.
What should I do ?
This program is the solution ?
Tks in advance for your help
Carlos
from Buenos Aires, Argentina, South America
tank you very much intol i owe u man!…………………tanx for the recovery of hard disk trick …tanx tanx tanx
Thanks!! It worked like a charm! recovered my drive letter and all 80gigs of data I thought lost… I had a slave drive that had thousands of drivers that I accumulate when I fix or set up friends/customers computers, and also dozens of images of cd’s, systems. Was workig one day then the next, no drive letter and winxp disk management showed no partition, unallocated… When I ran this program it showed no parameters for this drive… 0’s accross the board.. I just googled the model number + specifications and used those numbers to input into this program and rebooted and viola!! Same drive letter and all data there and available… doing a backup as I type this… WHEW!! Scared the bleep out of me. Nothing like this has ever happened to me and I got real lazy with backing up… NEVER again… So I thank you for the free program and as soon as I have some spare funds I WILL come here an buy SOMETHING…
HEY, i got western digital 160GB…and i have 70% important files…when my external hard drive put on my desktop and save something small files, after i remove my external harddrive and check to my laptop…ITS TOTALLY ALL MY FILES GONE!!!!! WHAT SHOULD I DO=(
Hi Dick,
I have a 500GB portable hard drive connected via USB. Only one partition was on the drive and I had used about 300GB of the space. My system sees the drive but, when I try to access it, I get a message telling me that “The disk structure is corrupt and unreadable.” I assume that my partition table has been corrupted or deleted. When I try using data recovery software (like the Easus DRW product), it sees 15 folders and many thousands of files but is taking forever to recover. I tried installing your free tool to recover the partition table, and it too sees the drive, but I don’t know what entries to use in the table, so I can push the “write” button to execute.