C
Carlos R.
Hi,
The summary:
------------
The gist of this very long post is that I had a secondary FAT32 120GB
drive (just storage, no OS) that was full. I bought a 200GB drive
(with controller card). I installed the card and drive (in NTFS) and
it seemed to work. I transferred all the data from the 120 to the
200. I experienced some trouble deleting files off of the 120, so I
formatted it (to NTFS). WHAM. I get message saying my 200GB drive
has corrupt partition tables. I restart, and now I can't see the
drive letter. I tried a bunch of things that did not seem to fix my
problem. I write to this newsgroup for help!!!
The dirty details:
------------------
I am running XP Professional.
I had 2 Western Digital 120GB w/ 8MB cache drives, both nearly full,
both FAT32.
I purchased a 200GB WD drive, and it came with an ATA controller card
to allow for drives bigger than 137GB.
I installed the card, and plugged in the 200GB drive as a slave and
one of the 120GB drives (not the one with the OS) as the master, both
on the cable attached to the controller card.
I installed the drivers for the card/drive, and then formatted the new
drive as NTFS using Partition Magic boot disks.
I rebooted, and I could see the drive letter for the 200GB drive. I
transferred all my files from one of the 120GB drives over to the
200GB drive. I then deleted the files from the 120GB drive, and again
used partition magic to format in NTFS because I had been having
problems deleting, occasionally it would say that Explorer couldn't
find this or that file to delete. So that's why I just reformatted the
drive. I was able to access and use files from the new drive.
Now I am told that this new 200GB drive has a problem.
I would try to open the drive, and it would tell me that it was
corrupted (or something to that effect, I think the word "corrupted"
was used but am not sure now). I restarted, and now the drive letter
doesn't show up.
I went back to look at the partitions
NDD asks me if I want to fix the problem, that this will mean going
through and searching for DOS partiitons. It also warned me to back up
the drive first. But how can I back up without being able to see the
drive? So, perhaps unwisely, I went ahead with this, and it is
currently goign through every Head and cylinder. It's currently at the
7600th cylinder, and progressing slowly. It didn't seem to progress
too much so I stopped it.
I tried a program called iRecover to try diagnose the drive. This
iRecover program tells me that "there are invalid volumes encountered,
and they were discarded." The description says "Partition Table
records for one or more volumes are damaged. Impact: This volume(s)
are not shown in the list."
Partition Magic 8, run in Windows, tells me that I have a 131GB
partition, then a 59GB partition, in addition to the 8MB partition at
the start of the drive. I think that this is because Windows is having
a hard time recognizing it past the 133GB mark. When I run Partition
Magic off boot disks, it says just one ~190 partition (in addition to
the 8MB partition).
When I check partitionInfo (outside of the regular PM program) and
select the drive in question, I get a pop-up error telling me that a
Disk Error was was detected on this drive, and to see the "errors:"
list for more details. I push "OK" and another message pops up
immediately, telling me that Disk Geometry error(s) were detected on
this drive. I push ok again.
I can paste the results but they are very long.
I used Runtime's DiskExplorer in conjunction with GetDataBack for NTFS
and while it was scanning the unallocated partition I could see
recognizable file names scrolling past. This gives me hope!
This GetDataBack program by Runtime Software actually was able to read
the disk image I created. Unfortunately, only 60 of the transferred
100GB shows up, and a lot is crap, and file names for all the stuff I
may want are not preserved, and while there is some directory
structure, it's mainly for windows OS directories, 40 of the 60GB of
files are in a single directory with names that don't make sense.
It's a demo version, so I can't actually copy anything over, but I
have been able to look at a few of the pictures. I just wish I could
copy some files over before I shell out $80 to get a registration
number. sigh.
On further exploration, I think that the files are mostly garbage.
Probably segments of files, but very few complete. Even the photos I
can open are much smaller than they used to be (4Megapixel images down
to around 500x500 pixels).
On the other hand, maybe the reason why the files I have seen don't
look right is because I don't have enough space to make a complete
200GB disk image because I do not have a 2nd 200GB drive to use.
I would consider getting another big drive to make a clone of the
trouble drive. Do you think that this would help? Would it have to be
identical, or just equal or greater size?
I know this was a very long post, but if you have any questions or
need clarification please let me know. If you have any answers,
please let me know too!!!
The summary:
------------
The gist of this very long post is that I had a secondary FAT32 120GB
drive (just storage, no OS) that was full. I bought a 200GB drive
(with controller card). I installed the card and drive (in NTFS) and
it seemed to work. I transferred all the data from the 120 to the
200. I experienced some trouble deleting files off of the 120, so I
formatted it (to NTFS). WHAM. I get message saying my 200GB drive
has corrupt partition tables. I restart, and now I can't see the
drive letter. I tried a bunch of things that did not seem to fix my
problem. I write to this newsgroup for help!!!
The dirty details:
------------------
I am running XP Professional.
I had 2 Western Digital 120GB w/ 8MB cache drives, both nearly full,
both FAT32.
I purchased a 200GB WD drive, and it came with an ATA controller card
to allow for drives bigger than 137GB.
I installed the card, and plugged in the 200GB drive as a slave and
one of the 120GB drives (not the one with the OS) as the master, both
on the cable attached to the controller card.
I installed the drivers for the card/drive, and then formatted the new
drive as NTFS using Partition Magic boot disks.
I rebooted, and I could see the drive letter for the 200GB drive. I
transferred all my files from one of the 120GB drives over to the
200GB drive. I then deleted the files from the 120GB drive, and again
used partition magic to format in NTFS because I had been having
problems deleting, occasionally it would say that Explorer couldn't
find this or that file to delete. So that's why I just reformatted the
drive. I was able to access and use files from the new drive.
Now I am told that this new 200GB drive has a problem.
I would try to open the drive, and it would tell me that it was
corrupted (or something to that effect, I think the word "corrupted"
was used but am not sure now). I restarted, and now the drive letter
doesn't show up.
I went back to look at the partitions
NDD asks me if I want to fix the problem, that this will mean going
through and searching for DOS partiitons. It also warned me to back up
the drive first. But how can I back up without being able to see the
drive? So, perhaps unwisely, I went ahead with this, and it is
currently goign through every Head and cylinder. It's currently at the
7600th cylinder, and progressing slowly. It didn't seem to progress
too much so I stopped it.
I tried a program called iRecover to try diagnose the drive. This
iRecover program tells me that "there are invalid volumes encountered,
and they were discarded." The description says "Partition Table
records for one or more volumes are damaged. Impact: This volume(s)
are not shown in the list."
Partition Magic 8, run in Windows, tells me that I have a 131GB
partition, then a 59GB partition, in addition to the 8MB partition at
the start of the drive. I think that this is because Windows is having
a hard time recognizing it past the 133GB mark. When I run Partition
Magic off boot disks, it says just one ~190 partition (in addition to
the 8MB partition).
When I check partitionInfo (outside of the regular PM program) and
select the drive in question, I get a pop-up error telling me that a
Disk Error was was detected on this drive, and to see the "errors:"
list for more details. I push "OK" and another message pops up
immediately, telling me that Disk Geometry error(s) were detected on
this drive. I push ok again.
I can paste the results but they are very long.
I used Runtime's DiskExplorer in conjunction with GetDataBack for NTFS
and while it was scanning the unallocated partition I could see
recognizable file names scrolling past. This gives me hope!
This GetDataBack program by Runtime Software actually was able to read
the disk image I created. Unfortunately, only 60 of the transferred
100GB shows up, and a lot is crap, and file names for all the stuff I
may want are not preserved, and while there is some directory
structure, it's mainly for windows OS directories, 40 of the 60GB of
files are in a single directory with names that don't make sense.
It's a demo version, so I can't actually copy anything over, but I
have been able to look at a few of the pictures. I just wish I could
copy some files over before I shell out $80 to get a registration
number. sigh.
On further exploration, I think that the files are mostly garbage.
Probably segments of files, but very few complete. Even the photos I
can open are much smaller than they used to be (4Megapixel images down
to around 500x500 pixels).
On the other hand, maybe the reason why the files I have seen don't
look right is because I don't have enough space to make a complete
200GB disk image because I do not have a 2nd 200GB drive to use.
I would consider getting another big drive to make a clone of the
trouble drive. Do you think that this would help? Would it have to be
identical, or just equal or greater size?
I know this was a very long post, but if you have any questions or
need clarification please let me know. If you have any answers,
please let me know too!!!
