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Unallocated Partition and Booting Errors

U

u486

Junior Member
I have two HDDs. The primary one holds Windows XP Pro along with programs and such. The second one is mainly for storage, that is, music, documents, etc. I had a 30GB partition at the end of the second HDD reserved for SUSE 10.1. I installed it and ran the OS fine and dandy. I then decided to get rid of it. I used Gparted 0.3.1-1 and somehow unallocated the entire second hard drive. I am now unable to boot into Windows.

I'm currently running Knoppix 5.01 on a DVD. I can access the data on my primary HDD fine, but when trying to access the other secondary one it says ?Could not mount device, it cannot determine the filesystem type and none was specified.?

I would like to be able to boot into an OS and somehow retain all my data on the second HDD.

Would I be able to access my second HDD's files if I changed the filesystem from unallocated to NTFS or FAT. I can't see any of the files for the second HDD in Knoppix, because it's unmountable.
 
See if Knoppix has gpart on it, it should scan the disk and look for the old partitions and if it's able to recover them you can start over.
 
When I run "gpart /dev/sdb" I get the following:

root@4[knoppix]# gpart /dev/sdb

Begin scan...
Possible partition(Windows NT/W2K FS), size(16700mb), offset(0mb)
Possible extended partition at offset(16700mb)
Possible partition(Windows NT/W2K FS), size(16700mb), offset(16700mb)
Possible partition(Windows NT/W2K FS), size(16700mb), offset(33400mb)
Possible partition(Windows NT/W2K FS), size(16700mb), offset(50101mb)
Possible partition(Windows NT/W2K FS), size(4094mb), offset(66801mb)
End scan.

Checking partitions...
Partition(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX): primary
Partition(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX): logical
Partition(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX): logical
Partition(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX): logical
Partition(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX): logical
Ok.

Guessed primary partition table:
Primary partition(1)
type: 007(0x07)(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX)
size: 16700mb #s(34202320) s(63-34202382)
chs: (0/1/1)-(1023/254/63)d (0/1/1)-(2128/254/61)r

Primary partition(2)
type: 015(0x0F)(Extended DOS, LBA)
size: 54195mb #s(110993085) s(34202385-145195469)
chs: (1023/254/63)-(1023/254/63)d (2129/0/1)-(9037/254/63)r

Primary partition(3)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
chs: (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r

Primary partition(4)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
chs: (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r
 
When trying to scan sda or sdc, it never finishes scanning! What does that mean?

What's with the last two primary partitions?

It has come to a point where I don't give a **** about my primary drive. I just want to recovery all my data on sda which is the secondary drive with all my data.
 
If you're sure your data partition was a primary one try creating a partition on the drive slightly larger than the old one was, creating/deleting partitions with Linux fdisk doesn't actually touch the filesystem so it's probably still there. That might let you mount it in Linux and at least make sure the data is there.
 
root@5[knoppix]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

Disk /dev/sdb: 74.3 GB, 74355769344 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9039 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 2129 17101161 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 2130 9038 55496542+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 2130 4258 17101161 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb6 4259 6387 17101161 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb7 6388 8516 17101161 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb8 8517 9038 4192933+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdc: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 262 2104483+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdc2 * 263 2873 20972857+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdc3 2874 30401 221118660 83 Linux
 
As you can see SDA doesn't list anything, but that's probably because a filesystem isn't associated with it. I'm positive the data is still there as I never formatted the drive since the incidence.

The HDD was formatted with about 200GB for storage for data and about 30GB for the Linux OS. The OS was located at the end of the HDD.

So you're saying that if I added a Linux partition to the drive, it would allow me to view the original data even though the partition with the crucial data was formatted with NTFS?

Also I would like to somehow copy or replicate everything on SDA to SDC if possible, because SDC is the new HDD I just added with no important data. I'm just using it to somehow recover my data.
 
So you're saying that if I added a Linux partition to the drive, it would allow me to view the original data even though the partition with the crucial data was formatted with NTFS?
Click to expand...

In general yes, just create a new partition at the beginning of the drive that's like 100.1G in size and you should be able to mount it read-only at least.
 
What in the world is SDB2? That doesn't even make any sense? I never even created that partition. I made a partition for the OS, one with programs, two for games, and one for the paging files. There should be five and not six.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
In general yes, just create a new partition at the beginning of the drive that's like 100.1G in size and you should be able to mount it read-only at least.
Click to expand...

I have about 100-150GB of actual data in the first partition. I don't want to overwrite any of it.

Wouldn't a really small partition work? Plus all the data should be at the beginning of the drive as I did put Linux at the end of the drive.

 
Here's my boot.ini file located on SDB1:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noguiboot /noexecute=optin
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noguiboot
 
I don't know why there are four for selection. There were originally two for some odd reason. Then there were three when I installed XP on the third HDD, but I got rid of that when I overwrote it with Linux. I can only boot with the DVD to get into SUSE. Then there were four when I tried the "bootcfg /rebuild" command in XP's recovery console.
 
When I choose the first selection which I believe was created by using the "bootcfg /rebuild" command I get a blue screen.
 
I have about 100-150GB of actual data in the first partition. I don't want to overwrite any of it.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I misread what you typed, all I meant to tell you to do was create a partition slightly larger than the old one. So if the old one was 200G create one that's like 200.1G.

 
One more thing I forgot to mention is how I reconnected the HDDs. My WD Raptor remained at SATA1, but I moved my second HDD from SATA2 to SATA3 and then I put the new HDD to SATA2. For some reason SATA3 is read as SDA and SATA1 is SDB and SATA2 is SDC. The motherboard is a DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D.
 
I simply wanted my data drive to be last and I was going to install Linux distros on the new one. I just wanted the first two drives to be reserved for OSes. I wonder if moving them around complicated the issue?
 
The blue screen error is as follows:

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF789E640,0xC000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)
 
BSOD with the technical information:

*** Stop 0X0000007B (0XF789E640,0XC000034,0X00000000,0X00000000)
 
NACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE is a pretty self-explanatory error, are you sure there was nothing important to Windows on that other drive? And did you try recreating that partition yet?
 
I have two exams Wednesday so I'll have to work on this some other time. As of now I haven't recreated the partition yet but I suppose I'll try it once I have the time.
 
I was able to successfully boot into Windows after doing a complete Windows installation on the primary partition on the primary drive. I never did a format so all my original files were kept in place. I tried a repair installation, but it never worked. It would just hang with a blue screen, that is, not a blue error screen but just a regular blue screen.

Unfortunately, I need to reconfigure my settings and registry and reinstall some programs and drivers that require an installer. All my programs were installed on a separate partition so it's not too bad. Some work and some don't. I'll just reinstall the ones that don't work as all my setup files are located on my data drive.

Now I'm using File Scavenger to recover all my files on my data HDD.

I also learned how to reconfigure the boot.ini file.
 
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