Lost partitions on SATA drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter cumu2003
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cumu2003

Hi.

I've got a computer with 4 sata hdd drives connected to them, and the
computer started to play up a little when I installed an update to
windows XP from the xp updates site for the raid controller. It kept
coming up with a bsod with an error I can't remember (think it was
something like IO_REQUEST_ERROR or something like that).

This is the setup of the drives I've got:

HDD1 - 6 partitions
HDD2 - 1 partition
HDD3 - 1 partition
HDD4 - 1 partition

Anyway, I decided to try and set the drives up in a raid situation,
wondering if this would work? So I went into the bios, changed the
disk type to raid instead of ide (as my bios allows), and then
restarted. Upon restarting, i loaded up the raid software, and created
a striped raid set (I think that was what it was called). I loaded up
the machine, and it didn't boot up. So then went back into the bios
software, deleted this raid set and created a mirror raid set. booted
up, still nothing. got the "please insert a boot disk" error message.
so I deleted the raid set again, and left it as blank, and still
nothing.

then I went to the bios again, and changed the disk type to other
media. this loaded up to the raid software again, but still didn't
boot. i never made any changes to the raid sets. went back to the
bios, and put it back to ide type. then restarted. still no joy with
booting (need a boot disk still!).

So I think that I will need to re-install windows XP again. insert the
xp disk, and it loads up. come to the bit where it asks me to select
the partition to install to, and only the partition labels of disk 3 &
4 are showing! So by the looks of it, the partitions of disk 1 and 2
have been deleted?!?!?

So my question is, is it possible to recover the partitions and all the
data on them? I haven't written anything onto the disks at all since I
did it. So what is the best thing for me to do to have the best
fighting chance of recovering the partitions and all my data?

Hopefully someone can help me out on this :)

Thanks in advance

David
 
Hi.

I've got a computer with 4 sata hdd drives connected to them, and the
computer started to play up a little when I installed an update to
windows XP from the xp updates site for the raid controller. It kept
coming up with a bsod with an error I can't remember (think it was
something like IO_REQUEST_ERROR or something like that).

This is the setup of the drives I've got:

HDD1 - 6 partitions
HDD2 - 1 partition
HDD3 - 1 partition
HDD4 - 1 partition

Anyway, I decided to try and set the drives up in a raid situation,
wondering if this would work? So I went into the bios, changed the
disk type to raid instead of ide (as my bios allows), and then
restarted. Upon restarting, i loaded up the raid software, and created
a striped raid set (I think that was what it was called). I loaded up
the machine, and it didn't boot up. So then went back into the bios
software, deleted this raid set and created a mirror raid set. booted
up, still nothing. got the "please insert a boot disk" error message.
so I deleted the raid set again, and left it as blank, and still
nothing.

then I went to the bios again, and changed the disk type to other
media. this loaded up to the raid software again, but still didn't
boot. i never made any changes to the raid sets. went back to the
bios, and put it back to ide type. then restarted. still no joy with
booting (need a boot disk still!).

So I think that I will need to re-install windows XP again. insert the
xp disk, and it loads up. come to the bit where it asks me to select
the partition to install to, and only the partition labels of disk 3 &
4 are showing! So by the looks of it, the partitions of disk 1 and 2
have been deleted?!?!?

So my question is, is it possible to recover the partitions and all the
data on them? I haven't written anything onto the disks at all since I
did it. So what is the best thing for me to do to have the best
fighting chance of recovering the partitions and all my data?

Hopefully someone can help me out on this :)

Thanks in advance

David
Click to expand...

You're in big trouble pal ;-) Call in an expert and explain in much
greater and precise detail, than you have here, exactly what you have
done. You may just be in with a chance, but I doubt it.

You can't just switch between raid and non raid configurations; time to
get the backups out - you do have backups don't you?
 
You're in big trouble pal ;-) Call in an expert and explain in much
greater and precise detail, than you have here, exactly what you have
done. You may just be in with a chance, but I doubt it.

You can't just switch between raid and non raid configurations; time to
get the backups out - you do have backups don't you?
Click to expand...

Cheers for the well worth it msg...

If you can give me greater detail, then you know that I'd appreciate
it!!!
 
On 23 Sep 2005 11:06:41 -0700, (e-mail address removed) wrote:

You could try some recovery software which may find the partions but
its a long shot. Setting up raid means the BIOS writes to the drives
to set up the raid.
 
OK, I've used Active@ Partition Recovery, which has recovered the large
partition on disk 2, but on disk 1 there are 6 partitions. Therefore,
i have an extended partition to allow me to create more drives. when I
can with active@ Partition recovery, it only recovers the drives it
finds as logical drives, not extended. So is there any way for it to
be able to recover the extended partion, and the the drives from within
that partition? Or is there any other software which can find the
drives???

Cheers.

David
 
OK, I think that it is all sorted now :)

I ran into a little program called "testdisk" which checked the disk,
and found all the partitions (including extended) and wrote them back
to the disk...

Not too sure as to whether all the data is still there or not though!
I've got to go through a task or re-installing windows, as it looks as
though it is about to load it ok, but it doesn't load anything and
hangs. so it could be that the boot is messed up, or that it hasn't
recovered the data. so I'm about to reinstall xp and find out...

Hopefully it's just that the boot up is messed up! If not, I guess
it's a case of trying to recover all the lost data!!!
 
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