recover data

  • Thread starter Thread starter Skeleton Man
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Skeleton Man

Hi guys,

I know this isn't strictly a hardware question, but what software do you
reccomend for recovering data from a bad partition ?

I had a 40GB FAT32 partition (on my 200GB secondary WD) which I used to
store mainly ghost images of the OS, etc. Last night I copied about 4Gb of
files to it no problem, but this morning when I turned the PC on it says the
partition is no longer formatted ! Any disk utils (Parition Magic, etc)
just report it as unformatted also..

Any ideas on what could've caused this ? I have several other paritions on
the drive and they're all fine..

I tried "EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard", which picks up all the mp3's,
documents, etc I had laying around on the drive, but the 20GB worth of GHOST
images are nowhere to be found ! (and they're what I want most) It finds
several thousand GZ files at 20MB each though, which could be fragments of
ghost images.. (each ghost image is split into anywhere from 6 - 10
ghost-span files at 2GB each)

I figured maybe one of you guys had a good experience with some recovery
software and would reccomend it ?

Regards,
Chris
 
Do you know fat32 has a file size limit of 4 gigs?
The damage *might* have been attempting to write a file larger than 4 gigs.
If you are using win2k, XP (or Vista) you should convert the drive to NTFS
Click to expand...

I'm well aware of the limit.. and it's FAT32 for a reason, so I can boot
from DOS/floppy and run norton ghost..

You can't damage a file system that way.. it will simply refuse to copy the
file.. (btw, the files I copied were about 1GB each anyway)..

Regards,
Chris
 
Skeleton Man said:
Hi guys,

I know this isn't strictly a hardware question, but what software do you
reccomend for recovering data from a bad partition ?

I had a 40GB FAT32 partition (on my 200GB secondary WD) which I used to
store mainly ghost images of the OS, etc. Last night I copied about 4Gb of
files to it no problem, but this morning when I turned the PC on it says the
partition is no longer formatted ! Any disk utils (Parition Magic, etc)
just report it as unformatted also..

Any ideas on what could've caused this ? I have several other paritions on
the drive and they're all fine..

I tried "EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard", which picks up all the mp3's,
documents, etc I had laying around on the drive, but the 20GB worth of GHOST
images are nowhere to be found ! (and they're what I want most) It finds
several thousand GZ files at 20MB each though, which could be fragments of
ghost images.. (each ghost image is split into anywhere from 6 - 10
ghost-span files at 2GB each)

I figured maybe one of you guys had a good experience with some recovery
software and would reccomend it ?

Regards,
Chris
Click to expand...

Do you know fat32 has a file size limit of 4 gigs?
The damage *might* have been attempting to write a file larger than 4 gigs.

If you are using win2k, XP (or Vista) you should convert the drive to NTFS
 
Hi guys,

I know this isn't strictly a hardware question, but what software do you
reccomend for recovering data from a bad partition ?

I had a 40GB FAT32 partition (on my 200GB secondary WD) which I used to
store mainly ghost images of the OS, etc. Last night I copied about 4Gb of
files to it no problem, but this morning when I turned the PC on it says the
partition is no longer formatted ! Any disk utils (Parition Magic, etc)
just report it as unformatted also..
Click to expand...


Is there any chance the system or OS doesn't support beyond
128GB and that partition went beyond it?

Any ideas on what could've caused this ? I have several other paritions on
the drive and they're all fine..
Click to expand...

Some past SATA bios were buggy, maybe your board needs a
bios update? You didn't tell us much about the hardware.


I tried "EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard", which picks up all the mp3's,
documents, etc I had laying around on the drive, but the 20GB worth of GHOST
images are nowhere to be found ! (and they're what I want most) It finds
several thousand GZ files at 20MB each though, which could be fragments of
ghost images.. (each ghost image is split into anywhere from 6 - 10
ghost-span files at 2GB each)

I figured maybe one of you guys had a good experience with some recovery
software and would reccomend it ?
Click to expand...


If it's now fragmented, you'd expect any of the software to
find the fragments, it's not intelligent enough to think
about whether it's a ghost file and try to piece them all
back together. I've tried a few freeware recovery programs
that didn't do as well as Ontrack EasyRecovery. Then again
I never trust HDDs in a client system, I assume them
volatile and copy anything worth keeping to a NAS.
 
Skeleton Man said:
Hi guys,

I know this isn't strictly a hardware question, but what software do you
reccomend for recovering data from a bad partition ?

I had a 40GB FAT32 partition (on my 200GB secondary WD) which I used to
store mainly ghost images of the OS, etc. Last night I copied about 4Gb
of
files to it no problem, but this morning when I turned the PC on it says
the
partition is no longer formatted ! Any disk utils (Parition Magic, etc)
just report it as unformatted also..

Any ideas on what could've caused this ? I have several other paritions on
the drive and they're all fine..

I tried "EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard", which picks up all the mp3's,
documents, etc I had laying around on the drive, but the 20GB worth of
GHOST
images are nowhere to be found ! (and they're what I want most) It finds
several thousand GZ files at 20MB each though, which could be fragments of
ghost images.. (each ghost image is split into anywhere from 6 - 10
ghost-span files at 2GB each)

I figured maybe one of you guys had a good experience with some recovery
software and would reccomend it ?

Regards,
Chris
Click to expand...

Try
-(with fingers crossed) the drive in a different system (probably won't
work)
-using different OS (Linux) and see if you can copy the partition;
-PC File Inspector, data recovery tool;
-fdisk mbr or recovery console fix mbr depending on the operating system;
-to find a utility that will rebuild the boot sector on the partition....

good luck

Mike
 
Okay I should add some more detail:

The drive is a 200GB western digital WD2000JB (ATA-100) which I have had for
about 3 years now with the same partitioning..

The system was working fine up until this morning when this happened.. I
run windows 2000 pro sp4 and never had a problem... (48bit LBA is enabled)

I changed to a new mainboard/cpu about a month ago, but again not a problem
with the drive or the OS.. (yes it's a clean install)..

All the other partitions are fine, as are all the partitions on my primary
drive (WD800JB).. all SMART readings are normal/ok..

Basically, it's as if a single partition on a single drive suddenly
formatted itself ! (impossible as that is.. especially with the PC turned
off overnight!)


Chris
 
Skeleton Man said:
NTFS

I'm well aware of the limit.. and it's FAT32 for a reason, so I can boot
from DOS/floppy and run norton ghost..

You can't damage a file system that way.. it will simply refuse to copy the
file.. (btw, the files I copied were about 1GB each anyway)..
Click to expand...

Did the machine take a bit longer than usual to boot up that day?

It looks like chkdsk must have been run (automatically) on that partition.

Since all your Ghost files were "chopped up" they are probably not
recoverable now.

The only advice I could give would be to copy (or span) your Ghost images to
DVD's
in the future.
 
Skeleton said:
Okay I should add some more detail:

The drive is a 200GB western digital WD2000JB (ATA-100) which I have had for
about 3 years now with the same partitioning..

The system was working fine up until this morning when this happened.. I
run windows 2000 pro sp4 and never had a problem... (48bit LBA is enabled)

I changed to a new mainboard/cpu about a month ago, but again not a problem
with the drive or the OS.. (yes it's a clean install)..

All the other partitions are fine, as are all the partitions on my primary
drive (WD800JB).. all SMART readings are normal/ok..

Basically, it's as if a single partition on a single drive suddenly
formatted itself ! (impossible as that is.. especially with the PC turned
off overnight!)
Click to expand...

I think that only conclusion you can reasonably draw is that the "partition
type" byte for that partition in the partition table is not among the list of
known partition types. That's why it says "not formatted". Since you know what
it should be, changing it to that value with one of your utilities might help
shed some light.

Bob
 
I think that only conclusion you can reasonably draw is that the "partition
type" byte for that partition in the partition table is not among the list of
known partition types. That's why it says "not formatted". Since you know what
it should be, changing it to that value with one of your utilities might help
shed some light.
Click to expand...

Can you suggest a utility that would allow me to do this ? Partition magic,
etc will only let me format it.. (not just change the partition type flag)

Chris
 
Skeleton said:
Can you suggest a utility that would allow me to do this ? Partition magic,
etc will only let me format it.. (not just change the partition type flag)
Click to expand...

Not offhand I can't. I'd have to search for one. I probably had one on my system
once upon a time, but I can't locate it now. PM is unlikely for this job. Read
this for a guide: http://www.ata-atapi.com/hiwtab.htm Don't forget to record
what value had been put in there.

Bob
 
Not offhand I can't. I'd have to search for one. I probably had one on my
system
once upon a time, but I can't locate it now. PM is unlikely for this job. Read
this for a guide: http://www.ata-atapi.com/hiwtab.htm Don't forget to record
what value had been put in there.
Click to expand...

I did some research think the problem is a corrupted boot sector.. problem
is nothing will fix it !

I tried a utility called "testdisk" which tells me the partition in question
is FAT32 (type 0c) and that both the main and backup boot sectors are
corrupt. As soon as I try to rebuilt the boot sector it sits there telling
me it's searching for the FAT.. then just goes back to the summary screen
without fixing anything..

Next I tried partition table doctor.. this tells me as soon as it starts
that there is a problem with the boot sector and I should use the "fixboot"
option to correct it.. *but* as soon as I get to the main screen it doesn't
recognise that there's a FAT32 partition there.. it lists my other
partitions and says "Free 40013MB" where the missing partition should be !!
Needless to say it won't let me run "fixboot" on a partiton that doesn't
exist..

I tried the recover partitions option, but it doesn't find the partition I
want either..

Chris
 
Skeleton said:
I did some research think the problem is a corrupted boot sector..
problem is nothing will fix it !

I tried a utility called "testdisk" which tells me the partition
in question is FAT32 (type 0c) and that both the main and backup
boot sectors are corrupt. As soon as I try to rebuilt the boot
sector it sits there telling me it's searching for the FAT..
then just goes back to the summary screen without fixing anything.

Next I tried partition table doctor.. this tells me as soon as
it starts that there is a problem with the boot sector and I
should use the "fixboot" option to correct it.. *but* as soon
as I get to the main screen it doesn't recognise that there's a
FAT32 partition there.. it lists my other partitions and says
"Free 40013MB" where the missing partition should be !! Needless
to say it won't let me run "fixboot" on a partiton that doesn't
exist..

I tried the recover partitions option, but it doesn't find the
partition I want either..
Click to expand...

The boot sector isn't a partition, it is just a sector.

--
<http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt>
<http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/423>
<http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit043.html>

"A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much."
-- Francis Crick, co-discover of DNA
"There is nothing more amazing than stupidity in action."
-- Thomas Matthews
 
The boot sector isn't a partition, it is just a sector.

I'm aware of that.. I meant the software won't find the parition I want to
fix the boot sector for..

Chris
 
Skeleton said:
I'm aware of that.. I meant the software won't find the parition
I want to fix the boot sector for..
Click to expand...

It isn't in a partition either. It stands by itself as the first
sector on a drive.

--
<http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt>
<http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/423>
<http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit043.html>

"A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much."
-- Francis Crick, co-discover of DNA
"There is nothing more amazing than stupidity in action."
-- Thomas Matthews
 
CBFalconer said:
It isn't in a partition either. It stands by itself as the first
sector on a drive.
Click to expand...

Every partition has its own boot sector. If the MBR was fried, he would
probably have had a bigger problem
 
Well I gave up on my mission to recover the contents of the partition.. it
wasn't vital information, just stuff I would've liked to keep..

It also appears it wasn't confined to one partition.. another 80GB
partition showed missing files.. (showing 70GB used, but only 50GB of files
were visible.. the rest seemed to have dissapeared).. I ran chkdsk and it
told me there were unrecoverable errors..

I copied what I could off the faulty drive and I'll be replacing it very
soon.. it's under warranty for another 3 days, but I'd have to return it to
whatever WD office in Australia for replacement.. (I took my whole PC with
me when I moved from Australia to Canada)

Anyone got a better backup solution than DVDs ? At 8 discs per backup * 4
backups per month, I'd end up with a mountain of discs in no time.. even
dual layers would still be 4 discs per backup.. but at the equivlent of
$2.50 per disc I doubt I would use them anyway.. (they don't sell them
locally, I can't find them in Walmart or anywhere, so I have to purchase off
ebay at a cost of $35 per 20 discs + $15 shipping)

Is there such a thing as network attached raid ?

Chris
 
Anyone got a better backup solution than DVDs ? At 8 discs per backup * 4
backups per month, I'd end up with a mountain of discs in no time.. even
dual layers would still be 4 discs per backup.. but at the equivlent of
$2.50 per disc I doubt I would use them anyway.. (they don't sell them
locally, I can't find them in Walmart or anywhere, so I have to purchase
off
ebay at a cost of $35 per 20 discs + $15 shipping)

Is there such a thing as network attached raid ?
Click to expand...

Yes, but pricey.

I back up all my files on hard drives mounted in cheap USB enclosures.
Anything important is duplicated to seperate drives. Hard drives are cheap!

You could also just set up a RAID5 array on your PC (or another PC on your
network). At least if a drive fails you can replace it and rebuild the
array. Only downside here is that all drives should be the same size, unless
you don't mind wasting space.
 
Yes, but pricey.
Click to expand...


Doesn't have to be, take an older system and put a $15 RAID
card, $15 Gigabit NIC in it. You wouldn't have RAID5 or
maximum possible gigabit performance but pretty good return
on investment if you have the spare system and space for it
(which becomes quite a bit easier to manage when it can be
on the lan instead of distance limited by a USB or 1394
cable.
 
Is there such a thing as network attached raid ?
Doesn't have to be, take an older system and put a $15 RAID
card, $15 Gigabit NIC in it. You wouldn't have RAID5 or
maximum possible gigabit performance but pretty good return
on investment if you have the spare system and space for it
(which becomes quite a bit easier to manage when it can be
on the lan instead of distance limited by a USB or 1394
cable.
Click to expand...

That's not a bad idea.. I might setup a RAID array on the PC too as it has
onboard RAID/GB NIC..

The onboard RAID is only software/bios helper though (I'm guessing a $15
RAID card is the same?), so what would it cost me for a true hardware RAID
controller, and can you reccomend a brand ? (capable of RAID5)

Chris
 
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