After reinstall, W7 says my 2nd hard drive is in RAW format..wtf?

[bankster55]

WOAH!!
Now things get interesting
(And I said wait till I give O.K. for repair)
FF and hidden (FF means free space)
Where did this HDD come from - was it in an OEM PC?
Did you buy it used from some genius?
This makes no sense - your 250GB drive main solo partition was active and hidden
But its just a DATA DRIVE, never had O/S
then it showed as dynamic - how the hell did that happen?
Sumthin very fishy here.
You never answered - the sw to change from dynamic to basic - you PAID for it, not the trial?? It said successful?
I just reread your Original Post - you couldnt even see anything from live Ubuntu right from the get go. And that drive had an XP offset (31K) which means it was partitioned with it, prob had O/S too. And the offset was a dyn partition as was the unallocated at end of disk - thats crazy.

this is now another ballgame
download this and run it
and use flyout window at top to reflect the DRIVE we want
and make a screenshot
http://www.pendriveapps.com/partition-table-editor-ptedit/
fwiw there is always a copy of MBR so thats where PTDD comes in

And right click the drive in diskmanager/properties
what file system?

 

[Matt915]

you know, it's funny....I bought the drive off newegg back in late 2009, it was supposed to be new. But I went back just now and looked at some of the fragmented images that Power Data Recovery program found, and I do not recognize a TON of them.

And yeah, I have the paid version of the software to convert from dynamic to basic. It successfully converted it back to basic the program said. The file system is blank, here's a screen shot:

and here's the partition table:

 

[bankster55]

heres what i am thinking
somebody returned drive to newegg because he fubared it up and couldnt use it, decided to claim it as dead to get another.
newegg checks it out and thinks it works fine (which it does)
put it in new bag and ship it to you
there is no other explain for this nonsense
>How did you format the drive for use??
I'm wondering if you put your format over the hidden one thats there, or if THATS what caused the dynamic crappola.

if so, only recovery sw can work here - IF THAT

no filesystem showing is bad news

running PTDD cant hurt anything
so, boot to PTDD from disk, point at 232GB drive and click rebuild.
It will say can or cant try to fix, it if says possible, then STOP and tell me.

 

[Matt915]

it says it can try and fix it

 

[bankster55]

C'mon man, work with me, you didnt answer my question on how you formatted the disk. You want help? I need info.

well, thats a good message from PTDD, but lets try ZAR first
gotta be real careful here not to bork things permanenetly
heres the demo
http://www.z-a-recovery.com/download.htm
I think it doesnt let you save stuff, but you can see what it finds
Will take a long time
However, do not save anything until you see what you want and ask me
Coinidentally they have a $30 off sale right now - heh

Edit: gotta go now, be back tomorrow morning. Dont do anything on your own.

 

[Matt915]

C'mon man, work with me, you didnt answer my question on how you formatted the disk

well, thats a good message from PTDD, but lets try ZAR first
gotta be real careful here not to bork things permanenetly
heres the demo
http://www.z-a-recovery.com/download.htm
I think it doesnt let you save stuff, but you can see what it finds
Will take a long time
However, do not save anything until you see what you want and ask me
Coinidentally they have a $30 off sale right now - heh

shoot, didn't see that part, it was formatted using windows whenever I first built this rig. I honestly don't remember. I think I just went into disk management and did it there

 

[Matt915]

zar found some stuff, but it was mostly fragmented files an unusable.

 

[bankster55]

O.K. I think your data is toast now
I guess when newegg looked at the drive, because the partition was hidden, they thought it was empty
You have a hybrid filesystem - theirs and yours
Heres your last chance:
GDB in RAW MODE!!
Must run as admin, all AV FW off, save back to SSD folder
I dont have time to show you how to do RAW be back tomorrow
http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-products.htm

 

[bankster55]

I'm back

Thing to do:
Download gpartedIt - it can recognize a bunch of format types that windows cant
burn it to a CD (not DVD)
boot to it and hit enter everytime it stops (defaults)
Go to 250GB drive (upper right corner = choice)
right click\properties on the one big partition and report what it says
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gpa...ble/0.7.1-5/gparted-live-0.7.1-5.iso/download

Thing to do next:
Open ptedit and highlight FF (free filespace) set type to 07 (zero seven)
Close it out
restart PTedit
Then highlight 07, go to boot tab and post screenshot
Normally this would get rid of hidden attrib, unless its a locked hidden
Also tell me me what happens in disk manager

Question:
How much space had you used up on the 250GB drive?

Edit:
BTW - havent given up yet

 

[bankster55]

I think I should clear something up here before i go any further.
I am not accusing NE of any shady business practices. I deal with them on a weekly basis and have never had problem one. They are always one of the highest rated vendors. If they are willing to give you back $10 on a HDD price adjustment when a later special deal comes out, they obviously want to please the customer, even if financially non advantageous.

I also have no idea of who had access to your computer - children, dorm mates, wives, friends etc. and you have had the HDD for about a year and a half, during which time anything could have happened.

They key here is that all along this thread, the partition showing as active is the big red flag. There are only three ways a partition can be flagged as active

>Install or attempted install of ANY Windows O/S
>Enduser manually setting so in diskpart or other Win based utility
>Third party partition sw - like the gparted boot flag, or Paragon or EaseUS Acronis etc.

Most times Windows wont even install to an already active partition.

Furthermore, the only people making hidden parts on a HDD are the OEM's, for a recovery partition or a recov manager partition. While someone with access to your PC MIGHT create an active unintentionally, YOU didnt make a hidden, nor did anyone that might have access to your PC,

Nothing we have done so far including the dynamic to basic convert would make your big single partition active or hidden. At one point I guessed this was a pull from an OEM take apart. But that would not explain the unknown files, which indicates prior usage.

In the old days, Partition Magic often created a dynamic when an enduser tried to stuff a 1GB image on a 50GB partition that only had about 2GB free, forgetting about the pagefile expanding and contracting, and the recycle bin set at 10%, and the restore cache.

Even should we take into account someone trying to image or clone a bigger drive, it might explain the active, but not the hidden.

 

[bankster55]

Check your PM - have sent you a link

 

[Matt915]

Sorry for the delay!

So I booted to gparted and the properties for the partition it has the correct size. File Type is listed as unallocated. I did the first step in PTEdit and set it to 07. I saved, closed, restarted PTEdit, but the boot record button is grayed out, no matter what I do, so I can't go to that tab apparently

 

[Matt915]

oh, and I had used about 100GB of the drive before all thise

 

[bankster55]

Questions have a mark - >

You have to highlight the partition again to get options (07 if its there)
If not, then there ARE NO ntfs formatted data
Which is again kind of strange
>Is there someone who hates you enough that might want to deliberately mess up your PC?
>did 07 stick as filetype?
>does it show ntfs in disk manager?

the important thing is to get rid of that friggin hidden attrib
lessee if 07 got rid of it
Go back into diskpart and do

sel dis 0
sel par1
det par

and make a screenie

with the part sw you may have to right click run as admin
(see my PM)
works fine for me
its a self contained .exe - no install (portable)
you can put it on a CD or USB
But if you actually want to boot to it, your CD\USB will have to be set up to be bootable.
you dont need that, you have a working SSD

 

[Matt915]

the 07 stuck as file type, but even if it's highlighted it still wont' let me go to that tab. It still shows as Raw in disk manager.


I can't get that program to run, I've tried running it in compatability mode as well and that didn't work. I'm about ready to say I just need to run killdisk and call it a loss. I have 99% of the data on my laptop that i can just copy over.

 

[bankster55]

O.K. Last question:

You said in original post that you had to do a reinstall of Win 7 on the SSD

Why?

You might also want to run HDD regenerator 2011 trial just to see if there are any bad sectors
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/HDD-Regenerator.shtml

You could also run PTDD just for giggles - it said it could try to fix - heh

 

[Matt915]

I do fresh installs every 6 months or so. I wanted to start with a fresh install and take an image of the SSD to roll back to if things ever got gunked up.

I'll give those two a try...let's see what PTDD does!

 

[Matt915]

LOL Looks like PTDD upgraded me from a 250GB drive to a 600 GB one hahaha

Could never get that other program to run at all....wonder why.

 

[you2]

If you continue to have problems; just boot a linux live cd; and then use fdisk and if needed a low level format. Last time I wanted to copy a windows disk; I just used linux cause windows (xp) kept aborting on hidden and system files;

cp -r win_disk target
diff -r win_disk target
-
works wonders and much faster.

 

[bankster55]

Man, I think there is something seriously wrong with your Windows install - or your SSD

You cant run the part sw or HDD regen
I would first run the manuf drive fitness test on the 250GB drive, then the SSD. There is some piece of the puzzle thats still missing here. Very hard to diagnose remotely. I'd hate to see you lose data again.
Right?
You are gonna have to get to the bottom of this, one way or another.
The Intel 10.1.1008 RST drivers are the first that do the trim thing properly. At least test to make sure trim is on.

Might try Kas live removal scan sw - doesnt install
http://devbuilds.kaspersky-labs.com/devbuilds/AVPTool/

 

[Matt915]

for what it's worth the SSD crapped out on me. OCZ Vertex piece of trash. Bad sectors all over the place, thing's a brick now.

 

[bankster55]

SSD's dont have sectors - 4096K or 8192KB page addresses emulated to MBR protocol. A secure erase could bring you back to 100%
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4159/ocz-vertex-3-pro-preview-the-first-sf2500-ssd

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?63521-TRIM-in-W7-AHCI
http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=86403
http://commandwindows.com/fsutil.htm
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/157

crystal disk info tells you whole story on your drive (from another if dead)
http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

 

[Baasha]

WTF this sounds scary! I am about to reinstall Win 7 on my system.. have 9 drives connected (1 external)... would it nuke the data if I did a clean install?

 

[MrTransistorm]

WTF this sounds scary! I am about to reinstall Win 7 on my system.. have 9 drives connected (1 external)... would it nuke the data if I did a clean install?

Disconnect all drives except the system drive before installing.

 

[Matt915]

SSD's dont have sectors - 4096K or 8192KB page addresses emulated to MBR protocol. A secure erase could bring you back to 100%
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4159/ocz-vertex-3-pro-preview-the-first-sf2500-ssd

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?63521-TRIM-in-W7-AHCI
http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=86403
http://commandwindows.com/fsutil.htm
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/157

crystal disk info tells you whole story on your drive (from another if dead)
http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

Secure erase doesnt work because no program can actually work on the drive. They all give me varying errors about the drive being locked or inaccessible.