NTFS convert gone bad

  • Thread starter Thread starter Burl
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Burl

An (unattended) FAT32 to NTFS convert went bad and I have the task
recovering the drive.

I mounted the drive as the primary drive on the secondary IDE so the
OS isn't writing to it. It is a Maxtor drive, the Maxtor utilities
report the physical drive to be in good working order. However, the
120 GB drive is reported as 37 GB, but it is not reported as
formatted. The OS (Win2000) is assigning the drive a drive letter but
SoftwareShelf's File Rescue and Norton Disk Doctor can't access the
drive. Both Restorer2000 and R-Studio can access the drive, using
their scan feature, they both find about 15 partitions. A mix of
FAT12; FAT16; FAT32; and an NTFS partition. All the partitions display
at least some files.

In my test run of the restore process it is hit and miss whether the
files had content or were corrupt. My GUESS is that I need to manually
adjust the partition offset but I have no idea how to think about that
process.

Three questions:
1) Is there a difference between Restorer2000 and R-Studio? Is seems
that they either licensed an underlying product or they have shared
development? If they are different are there advantages of one over
the other?
2) Is there a better tool for this task?
3) Are there any moderately advanced guides or sites for using these
tools? I don't understand these partitions - why so many and are they
just guesses. If I should adjust partitions how do I calculate/guess
what they should be? What do the various markings on the file names
mean?

Thanks,
Burl

By the way, where in the world did "Lost & Found" go?
 
Burl said:
An (unattended) FAT32 to NTFS convert went bad and I have the task
recovering the drive.

I mounted the drive as the primary drive on the secondary IDE so the
OS isn't writing to it. It is a Maxtor drive, the Maxtor utilities
report the physical drive to be in good working order. However, the
120 GB drive is reported as 37 GB
Click to expand...

The partition or the disk is reported as 37 Gb?
, but it is not reported as
formatted. The OS (Win2000) is assigning the drive a drive letter but
SoftwareShelf's File Rescue and Norton Disk Doctor can't access the
drive. Both Restorer2000 and R-Studio can access the drive, using
their scan feature, they both find about 15 partitions. A mix of
FAT12; FAT16; FAT32; and an NTFS partition. All the partitions display
at least some files.
Click to expand...

But, you were converting one partition. Is it only this partition you need
data from or other partitions as well (were more partitions present and are
they now loast as well)?
In my test run of the restore process it is hit and miss whether the
files had content or were corrupt. My GUESS is that I need to manually
adjust the partition offset but I have no idea how to think about that
process.
Click to expand...

Yes, my guess as well is that you need to manually define the original
partition. All bogus partitions I'd ignore.
2) Is there a better tool for this task?
Click to expand...

I am not claiming perse better, you can try iRecover though. If the disk was
indeed one partition, click Manual in the partition selection screen, and
check the option, "There was only one volume, scan entire disk". (before
that you need to check "Enable advanced mode in the options TAB"). If there
were more partitions you can set the scan area by defining a start position
and a size in Mb or sectors.
3) Are there any moderately advanced guides or sites for using these
tools? I don't understand these partitions - why so many and are they
just guesses. If I should adjust partitions how do I calculate/guess
what they should be?
Click to expand...

How was the disk partitioned anyway? A conversion doesn't alter partition
size.
By the way, where in the world did "Lost & Found" go?
Click to expand...

It was discontinued. It doesn't support NTFS and big disks anyway.

--
Regards and good luck,
Joep


--
D I Y D a t a R e c o v e r y . N L - Data & Disaster Recovery Tools

http://www.diydatarecovery.nl
http://www.diydatarecovery.com

Please include previous correspondence!

DiskPatch - MBR, Partition, boot sector repair and recovery.
iRecover - FAT, FAT32 and NTFS data recovery.
MBRtool - Freeware MBR backup and restore.
CHK-Mate - automated CHK file analysis & recovery
 
Sorry I didn't think to include the partition information. When I
installed the drive I fdisked it as 100% of the 117 GB drive. Now, the
disk is reported (in Win2000 Disk Manager) as 37 GB.

The reason I am guessing that at least some of these othere partitions
are legitimate is that I don't know what the convert command does. It
does beem plausible that they could have been copying doing something
that would look like a partition to the restore software.

Thanks for taking the time to look this over Joep.

Burl
 
Burl said:
Sorry I didn't think to include the partition information. When I
installed the drive I fdisked it as 100% of the 117 GB drive. Now, the
disk is reported (in Win2000 Disk Manager) as 37 GB.
Click to expand...

That is a problem. As all Win based file recovery software uses Windows API
to access the disk, they'll probably only see 37 Gb as well.
The reason I am guessing that at least some of these othere partitions
are legitimate is that I don't know what the convert command does.
Click to expand...

It does not create a bunch of partitions. Hang onto the original
partitioning. The, let the file recovery software guess if it should treat
the disk as NTFS or FAT32. If recovery results are poor, manually force the
other file system (the one not selected by the software) to be assumed.
 
Joep said:
news:[email protected]...
Click to expand...

Thanks for the recommendation of iRecover. The recovery is spotty at
best - didn't seem to handle any PDF or PST files, smaller files were
fairly uniformly recovered. I'm afraid that's more about the state of
the files than anything, it seems that files that span sectors (i.e
larger files) have problems.

I did tyr Active@ UNDELETE demo. It didn't seem to know where to start
and reported that it would take 10 days (252 hours) to scan the disk.
So, that was a short lived experiment.
That is a problem. As all Win based file recovery software uses Windows API
to access the disk, they'll probably only see 37 Gb as well.
Click to expand...
I wonder if I could define the disk parameters in the BIOS?
It does not create a bunch of partitions. Hang onto the original
partitioning. The, let the file recovery software guess if it should treat
the disk as NTFS or FAT32. If recovery results are poor, manually force the
other file system (the one not selected by the software) to be assumed.
Click to expand...
Thanks for this idea - I'll give it a try.

Burl
 
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