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Drives de-formatting constantly!

V

VERTIGGO

Senior member
Diskpart doesn't like the /FixMbr command for gpt so I'm not sure what to do.

My 3TB drive (backups) reported a CRC error when I was creating an rar archive, and selecting the folder it was reported corruption. I can't remember for sure, but I think it was the "file or directory is corrupted and unreadable" errormsg. I removed the drive, rebooted, and plugged it in, both to a SATA controller and the SAS controller it was on originally, and it's now just "Local Disk" and reports "raw" format.

I believe if I can simply overwrite the protective MBR it may return whole, since there really shouldn't be any trouble with the drive itself (HD Sentinal reports 100% health). It is irritating that it can fall apart on me like this with no provocation, but if I can restore the GPT I should be OK. Copying all the data from the original sources or recovering file by file might work, but it will set me back a ways in the very least.
 
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I'd start by booting a Linux live CD and see if it can read the drive. Linux is a lot more lenient with what it'll mount and read.
 
The problem isn't reading the files, I could figure out how to rescue the files, but I have nowhere to put 3TB temporarily so I want to repair the drive's MBR without wiping it. I've done it before with 2TB drives, but with a gpt, the "/FixMbr" option isn't allowed.
 
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The 3TB is the back up, but my point is that transfering 3TB of data from many sources, some remote, would take days.
 
VERTIGGO said:
The 3TB is the back up, but my point is that transfering 3TB of data from many sources, some remote, would take days.
Click to expand...

Right, sorry. Well try my suggestion maybe you can fix the drive with some reading. I'm afraid I've never used it on local drives just briefly for a friend and it was a partition edit on his also back up drive.
 
I ran the program, and disk manager now says "you must initialize disk before use", but it's still saying RAW data, so I'm no worse off really.
10s6mwj.png


I've been trying GPT fdisk, but it acts funny when it detects an MBR (my working c: drive) and says "are you sure you want to convert MBR to GPT, so I'll try creating a bootable thumb drive.
 
VERTIGGO said:
I ran the program, and disk manager now says "you must initialize disk before use", but it's still saying RAW data, so I'm no worse off really.
10s6mwj.png


I've been trying GPT fdisk, but it acts funny when it detects an MBR (my working c: drive) and says "are you sure you want to convert MBR to GPT, so I'll try creating a bootable thumb drive.
Click to expand...

I am no expert but it is my understanding that GPT does not have an MBR...let me see if I can find some documentation.
 
Well I booted into a Parted Magic 6.0 cd which supposedly has fdisk/gdisk, but it's nowhere to be found on that just a partition editor which reported "no filesystem found when scanning", so I'm on to "systemrescuecd 2.1.0" which also supposedly has fdisk on it. We'll see what happens. It's just infuriating that a $200 hard drive can operate flawlessly for 2 weeks and then commit suicide without provocation. The real clincher is that Hitachi support denies any responsibility, since the drive is technically "healthy", and merely refers me to $100 data recovery software...
 
If I were Hitachi support I would tell you the same thing. Chances of the drive just losing your data without any signs of failure are pretty slim so it's more likely memory, cabling, head, etc that's at fault. If the drive was having physical issues spinning up, seeking or reporting SMART errors that's another thing.
 
Sure, but how could a cable failure wipe out the entire protective MBR, GPT, GPT backup, and entire file system at one moment? That just screams flawed hard drive design if losing a few bits in transfer causes the thing to wipe itself clean...
 
VERTIGGO said:
Sure, but how could a cable failure wipe out the entire protective MBR, GPT, GPT backup, and entire file system at one moment? That just screams flawed hard drive design if losing a few bits in transfer causes the thing to wipe itself clean...
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Could be a cable failure in which extra current was applied at a bad time. Or that happened without a cable failure. Shit happens, I do hope you recover your data. GPT is still in its infacy, this issue reminds me of my switch to NTFS many years ago where I lost a drive of data 🙁
 
VERTIGGO said:
Sure, but how could a cable failure wipe out the entire protective MBR, GPT, GPT backup, and entire file system at one moment? That just screams flawed hard drive design if losing a few bits in transfer causes the thing to wipe itself clean...
Click to expand...

It might not have, but like lsv said, GPT is still really new and not many tools support it well if at all. It's possible that the GPT was updated incorrectly without the OS knowing so that corruption got propagated to the GPT backup and the protective MBR. The same reason why mirroring isn't a backup solution. Corrupt data, deletions, etc are all happily propagated to the mirror. And NTFS, despite MS claiming that it's now "self healing" and such is still a pain to recover from when there's a problem since the internals are closed behind MS' doors and all of the 3rd party tools are created from either licensing that from MS or plain old reverse engineering.

If parted doesn't see the GPT that's pretty bad. You might be able to use testdisk to find the filesystem and recover the data, but I've never tried it on a GPT drive.
 
Testdisk shows this:
Code: 
TestDisk 6.12-WIP, Data Recovery Utility, April 2009 
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org> [url]http://www.cgsecurity.org[/url]

Disk /dev/sdb - 3000 GB / 2794 GiB - CHS 364801 255 63
The harddisk (3000 GB / 2794 GiB) seems too small! (< 14050672 TB / 12779011 TiB) 
Check the harddisk size: HD jumpers settings, BIOS detection...

The following partitions can't be recovered:
Partition  Start        End			Size in sectors
MS Data	   73057285	27442718800508378	27442718727451093 [ ]
MS Data	   2697067512	27243424413646413	27243421716578901 [  @ W~I  ^K~G
Mac HFS	   3656709365	7427961628		3771252264 [  ^Op~J >eu^Y~A~I ^^Ey ^^^S tA]
MS Data	   4097828229	22136954826855971	22136950729027742
MS Data	   5860532223	11720800254		5860268032

[ Continue ]
XFS <=6.1, 14050671 TB / 12779011 TiB

Does this mean I'm screwed? It seems to show that it found something...
 
I selected "continue" and then selected the first partition, which was the largest (~2700GB) and listed the correct name for the partition I lost. The others were scrambled. I selected "write partition" and then it said it won't work until a reboot, so I rebooted and now it's still "unallocated" so I'm scanning again.

Then I checked my diskmanager, and immediately it says "disk 2 is must be formatted before use", but that's my C: drive! Lo and behold disk 2 (my SSD) shows 29GB "uninitialized". I am scared to reboot now... What the heck is going on? Drives are just falling apart?
 
More than likely you've got another issue with your PC and it's jut resulting in corrupt data going to/from your drives. That fact that the SSD went too pretty much rules out the drives themselves.
 
I agree, but how do I narrow this down? I'm about to pull the trigger on these:
Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz
ASUS P8P67 DELUXE (REV 3.0) LGA 1155 Intel P67
CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-850TX 850W
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=31645329&postcount=7

Which would result in new everything that matters data-wise, but I'd like to know which component to chuck in the bin... cpu, motherboard... can a simple bad sata cable do something this serious?
 
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GPT does not use a MBR. The protective MBR is really just a catch all to make non-GPT aware programs think the entire space is used and prevent them from screwing up the GPT partitions. If you are using older software it will not report GPT partitions correctly. Scanning a drive and trying to fix them with older software and altering the GPT partitions will corrupt data and without a copy of the GPT you cannot rebuild them since there are no markers on the partitions themselves that tell where they start or end.

Before doing anything to a GPT drive backup the data. Sector 0 has no backup because it is just a safety catch for old software. Sector 1 contains the header which stores the locations of the partitions. There is a copy of the GPT partition header at the very last sector of the drive.

You can copy the backup sector to sector 1 restoring the partition table.

GPT is really much simpler than the MBR way. It holds a table that list the total size of the disk and where each partition starts and stops on the disk. There is no primary, secondary, extended or any of that stuff. That GPT data is in 2 places on the drive, Sector 1 and the drives last sector. Make sure you only use GPT aware software.
 
Ok, so are you implying TestDisk is not? It asks you to select the partition type and I select "EFI GPT", or should I select "Intel/PC"? I thought it was "GPT aware" because it has an option right in the menu for GPT...
 
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VERTIGGO said:
Ok, so are you implying TestDisk is not? It asks you to select the partition type and I select "EFI GPT", or should I select "Intel/PC"? I thought it was "GPT aware" because it has an option right in the menu for GPT...
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I don't use TestDisk but looking at the website it doesn't look like it supports it , or at least fully.

Diskpart that comes with windows 7 is the best thing to use.

Diskpart , then Select Disk , then Detail Disk
That will tell you what the partitions are and the if they are intact.

Select Disk, Select Volume , detail volume
that will give the details of the volume and if it is GPT there should be a mark in the GPT column.

You cannot use fixmbr with GPT because GPT doesn't use the mbr
Use GPT command to set attributes for partitions, HELP GPT
 
"GPT help" lists:
required
no drive letter
hidden
shadow copy
and read only

The first one is the only one I would try, but what's the point? How is setting the attributes supposed to repair the GPT? The problem is there is no volume, so I can't even give this command. I am required to "select a volume" first anyway.
 
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