Hello,
When files are written, they are written from beginning to
end...um...it's more like opposite of cdrw - hard drives are written
from outer track to inner track. I've found good illustration on the
following link.
http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_disk_sector_structures.ht
m
Um...that's the reason for some people partitioning drive in two and
putting OS on first partition. Single turn of the disk patter results in
storing(reading/writing) more data in the case of outer track than inner
track(circumference being smaller thus shorter on the magnetic strip to
write the data on)... When computers were slow, people really did pay
attention to these mundain things including physical implementations of
the hardware...ha ha... Thesedays, things are so fast, these things
don't really matter.
Let's get to the point.
Let say that you have 30GB disk and only have three big files stored on
the disk. They are called File A, B, and C each in size of 10GB and
written/copied to disk in order of aphabet. So, file A is going to
occupy first 1/3 of the disk space, B, next 1/3(middle), and C the last.
For some reason you have deleted file B, which leaves you with 10GB free
space, however, you now have 10GB space free in the smack middle of the
hard drive space. So...partitioning single partition into two seperate
partition at this point is going to create a problem of totallying
losing the information of File C!!!. Partition programs are some what
smart on relocating files to frontal section of the hard drive to make a
free scratch space to make an another partition, but it can fail time to
time. I've seen some older program where partition manager know very
little about where all the files are located and just splits in wherever
user tells the program to do so...
So older programs like FIPS used to run "defragmentation" program in 1st
step to move all the files living in the rear section of the drive to
front part of the house(disk), because rear of the house is about to be
cracked and splatted to made into new living quarter for the
data(files)!!!
Um...so it looks like your file system's file table(FAT - in dos, I am
not sure what they are called in NTFS) only holds the address of the
file location but when you access the file to open the contents...It's
been erased by new partition(contents are YES 000000000000 - since
nothings are stored there).
This probably explains why some of the file has no contents!!!
Ok, if you read this far.
You have 3 choices.
1) stop what you are donig and shutdown the server which is affected by
partition
and call file recovery service - they are expensive so prepare to pay
$1500-$5000+ depends on the drive size. If the system's new partition
hasn't been formatted then your chance for 100% data recovery is
excellent, however, even if you have formatted the drive, then chances
for 100% recovery is pretty good. Only if you have started saving stuffs
on newly partitioned drive...then your mileage may vary depending on
which track/sector contains inaccessable file contents and.
2) If expensive cost is a problem and lost files are not that important
enough to lose you a job then you should just swallow your pride and
tell them that you have made a mistake and move on - this is only okay,
only if you can say that you have learned valuable lesson and you will
always backup before doing anything crazy to a production server even it
takes 3 days to backup things. Nobody got fired for backing stuffs up
before doing anything crazy stufss.
3) blame it on the software!
* next time you should buy another hard drive and not be so cheap.
Oktokie
-----Original Message-----
From: Troy [mailto:
[email protected]]
Posted At: Monday, July 10, 2006 1:52 PM
Posted To: alt.comp.hardware
Conversation: re-Partitions Disk
Subject: re-Partitions Disk
With Partition Manager, I have reorganized the two partitions of a disc
(S.O.: Windows 2003 small businness server; I have increased the firs -
with
the s.o. - and reduced the second - file server) But now, not all
files,
but many files Word/excel, or I have lost the content otherwise they are
in
illeggibile format. It's possible that all that has been caused from
that
operation?
I must to consider all the file lost?
Tks 1000 Troy
