Strange tale of large disk, pre windows SP2 and now it's not formatted?

[AtlantaBob]

This is one of those "oh no" situations.

I recently got a new Seagate PATA 300 GB HDD... wanted to move some data from an old disk to it. Lots of stuff up in the air, but ended up installing Windows XP on it from a pre-SP2 disc, so, obviously, no Large Disk support--the partition topped out around 130 GB or so. Still, moved data over, all is well.

Now I'm trying to read the disk a few weeks later -- installed in a USB enclosure (Rosewill, so it's cheap if anyone think's that's an issue. (Nonetheless, I have another HDD working just fine in another enclosure).

First time I plug it in, windows picks up the USB connection, shows a volume "E" and tells me the disk isn't formatted. Uh oh. I obviously tell it NOT to format the disk and start looking at disk management. The Disk Management tool tells me that there's the 130 GB or so partition (NTFS healthy) and a lot of unpartitioned space. Still, it won't let me mount the NTFS partition.

I unconnect the internal hard disk in the computer and attach the Seagate (the one with the problems) internally. Let it try to boot, but it just sits there -- no DISK BOOT FAILURE MESSAGE, nothing. I checked, and the BIOS clearly sees the drive.

Ok, move on to Linux -- look at the disk (as a USB addition) on a live CD version of Ubunto 6.06. It SEES the disk, but doesn't see any partition data on it, and tells me that there aren't any disks that I can mount.

Back to Windows again -- now, when I plug in the drive -- again, as USB, it doesn't see it as drive "E".

Now, it also doesn't show up in Disk Manager -- although it's still there in the Hardware Browser. Now, though, it says the following:

Disk Unknown
Type Unknown
Status Unreadable
Partition Stle Not Applicable

[Edit, I've tried looking at it now on two machines -- the desktop that's having an issue AND on a Windows XP Pro laptop.]

Now, can someone please solve the problem? Please?

Thanks. As I'm about to scream.

 

[AtlantaBob]

Ok, now this is just weird. And I may have misspoken earlier when Disk Management said that the format was NTFS the first time. I just installed the disk as an internal secondary disk. Now Windows sees it (as D, and Disk Manager sees it --however, the partition is marked as "Healthy (Active)" but with no partition type. None whatsoever. The free space also shows up. Does this change anyone's opinion?

 

[Bozo Galora]

you cant play musical chairs with a HDD going from internal primary IDE booting to external USB, to internal non booting secondary - you UNINTENTIONALLY change drive letters or boot.ini

first thing to try is right click the drive in disk manager and see if you can take ownership
if not, disable simple file sharing in folder options, and try again
if not, boot to XP CD and press R during setup, and go to recovery console, and type in drive # you want to change (the one with the booting O/S) and type FIXMBR (enter)

Or you can use nlite to slipstream SP2 into your XP CD and start again, I assume since its new, there is no supervaluable data on there yet.

Of course, Partition Magic 8 can fix this.
http://www.soft32.com/download_151.html

Edit: added word "unintentially"

 

[AtlantaBob]

Bozo,

I have changed drive letters on the drive -- right now, I'm fine using it as a data drive -- and, while most of the stuff is backed up somewhere else, there may be one or two things that aren't....
As far as doing with the disk, Disk Manager won't let me take ownership of it -- it sees the partition as RAW.

Does the recovery system console do the same thing as fdsk /mbr? That is, if the NTFS partition has somehow gotten messed up, that will replace it with the "good" backup version.

 

[AtlantaBob]

Ok, so OnTrack EasyRecover's trial version can view the volume as an NTFS formatted disk, and can see the files on it.

Here's the rub -- I really would rather do this without paying the $89 for the software (starving grad student and all) -- especially since I'm fairly certain I have backups of these files.

Would fdisk /mbr solve the problem? Or, could I possible screw up the disk so badly that I'd have to do more work to save files?

 

[ronnn]

pc inspector was recommended in this thread

 

[Tegeril]

Sometimes when a disk is detected as RAW, forcing a 5 stage Check Disk (chkdsk /r d: for example) can solve the issue. There is also Partition Magic mentioned above, and Data Rescue for PC. Fix MBR (also mentioned above) is a fantastic thought as well.

 

[Bozo Galora]

http://www.z-a-recovery.com/art-raw-filesystem.htm


Edit:
How is the Starship Enterprise like a roll of toilet paper??

They both circle "Uranus" and look for "Clingons"

 

[AtlantaBob]

Hi guys.... thanks for the other info. Perhaps I'm just slow on pickting hings things up today... but I wasn't quite sure how the Partition Magic method would work (never having used PM). Would I simply try to assign a file system type (NTFS) to the RAW disk, or would I say fix MBR, or... sorry, normally, I'd be happy to screw around and figure this out myself, but, alas, the disk does have some data on it that I don't have backed up (stupid, yes) and I'd rather not risk anything.

Bozo, thanks as well for the article link! I ended up finding it last night, but wasn't sure if anyone had used any of their products before.

Ok, off to try to the Fix MBR method and Chkdsk approaches.

 

[AtlantaBob]

Anyone?

Sorry, I hit that too early.

chkdsk still refuses to run since it's a raw partition.
And fixmbr didn't work -- it ran, but it didn't work.

Any help on Partition Magic?

 

[AtlantaBob]

The resolution: I finally decided I didn't really need the data that badly and formatted the drive. More comments on the software that I almost used below:

Oh well. I was willing to use OnTrack's Easy Recover Software, which, to be fair is excellent. It's their licensing that's the problem. They're willing to give you a copy of their software that can be used on up to 5 (5!) drives for $89.00. The only problem is that it can only recover 25 files in one session, and forces you to rescan the entire drive (an hour-long process or more on large drives) each and every time you want to recover 25 files. Only problem is, it's not real clear that you have to rerun the scan each and every time. A more advanced version goes for ~$200 (still for personal use) and can be used on 20 (20!) disks, and can restore the entire contents of a drive and can suspend and resume.

First, what kind of crazy licensing scheme is this? What type of home user will need to recover 5--or 20!--hard disks at any point in time. I would be happy to pay ontrack $89 or even $100 for a one-time use program, but I'm not going to pay them $200.00 for 20 licenses which I"ll never use.

To their credit, after their first line of customer support gave me a non-specific form letter, they allowed me to return their software--which lost them $89 worth of business. Why, oh why, don't they feel confident about selling out a one-time use key (heck, load it down with user ids, registration and the load of it) to use the full disk recovery product? It seems like they have a very strange combination of not trusting the user at all (forcing them to buy a rediculous number of licenses) and trusting them to a fault (all they asked was that I promise to actually delete the program before submitting a refund request).

OnTrack, if you read this, you have great software. Just get your licensing department onboard so you can sell it to people who are willing to pay for it!