Partition Lost - Urgent Assitant Required!

[Sefy]

My Drive D boot record has been completly curropted and i've lost the entire partition with EVERYTHING on it, I know the Data is still there, I have not reformated the drive.

I require assistance urgently, everything I got is on that drive (programs, sources, guide, bookmarks, emails and a hell lot more!) I need a GOOD known to work Tool that can FIX the boot record, not just restore the data from it to another drive, cause I got no space on any other drive, this ia 45gb HDD, and I must have the boot record/partition table REPAIRED!

Please leave me a message here, as I got NO email, NO ICQ, no NOTHING to communicate with!

[Mirror_Image]

Was this a CIH virus thing? It sort of sounded like it.

If so, you could give this a try:

http://grc.com/freepopular.htm

Scroll down to "FIX-CIH Virus Recovery" and download that teeny utility.

This tells you more about it:

http://grc.com/cih.htm

[Mirror_Image]

Hmm, I don't think that utility works in NTFS, just FAT and FAT32 I think.

[Sefy]

Unfortunatly this isn't a virus doing, this is a combination of Windows2000 and Partition Magic 7 doing, Windows2000 converted my entire partition into Dynamic Volume for absolutly no reason, and Partition Magic 7 trashed the MBR, and my Partition was gone, I've tried to use the Undelete Partition, but it does not detect it.

And all programs i've found can only restore files to another drive (which i'm currently trying to do with EasyRecoveryPro v5.12) but it detects too many partitions, and the files that come out of there, half of them are curropted.

I need something that knows how to rebuild the MBR/Partition Table and restore the partition to it's (as much as possible) accurate state.

I've currently installed ICQ on my C drive again, so now that is atleast operational, if anyone has anything that can help, i'm begging you people, it's 45gb and years of work on that drive, I cannot have it formated, I must have it fixed, if you can help, please page me or post here!

[Chips144]

Hi Sefy,

I am sorry to hear about your problem. You have helped me many times in the past. I hope you can apply this info to your problem.
I am running XP which includes, if you want to install it, a recovery console from which you can enter dos commands. Here is what I found on "fixboot", which incidentially I have used successfully to fix the exact problem you are having. See if this applies to 2000.

FixbootWrites a new partition boot sector to the system partition. The fixboot command is only available when you are using the Recovery Console.

fixboot [drive]

Parameter

drive

The drive to which a boot sector will be written. This replaces the default drive, which is the system partition you are logged on to. An example of a drive is:

D:

Example

The following example writes a new partition boot sector to the system partition in drive D:

fixboot d:

Note

Using the fixboot command without any parameters will write a new partition boot sector to the system partition you are logged on to.

[wellmashed]

Had a good look around the net for info on this and found this site

http://www.dtidata.com/

These people have their own software available for download and even have a live online assistance engineer to help you use the software as well.

Quote....

We specialize in data recovery software, undelete and system utilities for all Microsoft operating systems. Our line of data recovery software offers a safe and affordable solution to a costly problem. In addition, we provide free support for our entire product line.

Scroll down on the left and look for a section called....

Reboot - boot & partition repair for dos, 3.x, 9.x, Me NT, 2000 & XP.

Hope this will help..

[Sefy]

First let me say thank you for all your efforts they are very much appriciated! I still have not managed to repair my drive, but the somewhat good news is I managed to extract the sources for the guides to another drive.

Chips144, the partition is not visible, so I don't know if that program will be of help, cause there is no "D" drive at the moment since the partition is gone, however, could you email me that program (does it work on 98?) to my sefy@netscape.net account and also to the sefy@myrealbox.com ?

wellmashed, unfortunatly I can't afford to pay 300$ (that is something like over 1000 shekels in my currency) although if I had that kind of money right now, I propably would have, do you know of any freeware that can do this ?

[Speed Racer]

One day i was copying files from one drive to another and suddenly, POOF!, all my partitions went away (along with other 35 gig of stuff!) All that was left was my C drive and it was reporting the incorrect size too. My 80 gig drive now was reporting only just over 8 gig, i was so bummed. For 3 weeks i tried all i could to retrieve the data but it was lost. I never got it back. Since my mishap it's never happened again fortunetly however my cd burner gets used quite a bit more for backups than it ever used to

[wellmashed]

Sefy...Can you not physically take the drive to a data recovery specialist and get them to extract all the files and then drop them onto cd for you ?

[wellmashed]

Have a read of this m8..

http://networking.earthweb.com/netsecur/article/0,,12293_625721,00.html

don't click the link copy and paste it.....dunno why it wont click but it wont...


what o/s are you running anyway...

If it's NT or 2000 then look at this.. these apply to ntfs disks

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q153973

[wellmashed]

And this page reckons the tools on here will repair master boot record.

Available for download at $14.95

http://www.sadevelopment.com/ldt/repairmbr.htm

Sorry it's not freeware but can't find anything else.

[Sefy]

Speed Racer, sorry to hear that has happened to you too, it's very difficult to backup such large drives, especialy when all the data is important, I think that is the one thing a DVD Writer could be helpful, unfortunatly, even a DVD Writer would require several discs, I can't wait for FMD drives to come out!

wellmashed, I propably could, but those around here cost around over 1000$ and more, and being the weekend here, no one is open (fri/sat) and with 45gb to extract, well that would be somewhere in the 70 CD's neighbourhood!

By the way, i'm now running on my Windows98SE, the reason this happened is because of Windows2000, so untill I get everything backed up and fixed, I ain't getting back to 2000 like ever!

Oh, by the way, the problem is the Partition Table that is missing and the MBR of the secondary drive, the Primary drive is working correctly and without a flaw so far, propably cause i've made it invisble to Win2000!

Well, I got a bit of small news, i've managed to extract most of the data, so I now got email back, however all my installations (about 10gb) is gone for now as my work drive I borrowed is smaller then mine, i've used EasyRecovery Pro v5.12.1 to extract the programs.

Hopefully i'll have better news, i'm hoping to manage to extract everything and then I can reformat my D drive and put all the stuff back on and then see how much damage I got (most ZIP/EXE files seem to be curropt).

Again i'd like to extend my thanks to all you guys who giving me the time to help me out, I know it's not VCD related, and I really appriciate all the help I get!

[sean madison]

these programs used to fix the boot record that people are saying u say, sefy, that it might not work because their literally its no "d" drive.

Why cant u just make a boot disk, let the startup disk dump the ramdrive to drive e like it is suppose to and use one of these progs.

Also, just in case for u and others as i just did this a while back and is of use to others as well-

When u plug up a hard drive, MAKE sure that the cable is plugged in properly.

I accidentally had it turned the wrong way and windows thought there was nothin on the hd and was tellin me to partition it, and i was like, i dont think so.

So i looked and sure enough, it was backwards.

Also, if u recently got this new hd liek a few days ago, if both hds are running on same cable thru an ultra controller pci card, try putting each hd on its on port.
Some pci cards dont work good with support for 2 hds on same cable.

[Sefy]

Sean, in today's mainboards, if you put the IDE cable the other way around, the board won't even start up, that is, if you have a decent mainboard, and as being a Technician, trust me when all my cables are connected proparly, but thank you for the advice.

Well, i've lost alot, but thankfully my boss allowed me to borrow a drive from work, so I was able to ressurect some of the stuff to another drive, and today i've restored that stuff back to my own drive, so no more hope of trying to fix it i'm afraid.
To everyone that was trying to help, thank you so much, it ment alot, I have managed to salvage the guides sources, so atleast that work isn't lost, but I as for those who emailed me the last 3 days, i'm afraid if you haven't recieved a reply from me, send email again, as i've lost around 36 emails in the data loss, will currently take me a bit longer to answer emails as i'm going through what was salvaged and to see how good it is, but i'll try to be back on the forums as soon as possible, again, thank you everyone for everything!

[jeex]

i know this may be retarded to say.. but have you tried powerquest's lost & found? i once had a drive that went through a fire in my room that windows wouldnt detect for anything.. not even in fdisk.. i managed to recover a vast majority of my data.. i know we're not allowed to offer warez, but i can send you my copy.. maybe it would help out some.. but this is probably too late anyhow.. if not though, the offer stands..

[Sefy]

jeex, thanks for the offer, unfortunatly, Lost and Found can't handle ATA66/100 drives very well (including the last 1.06) and it's Long File Name handling is very bad, that's why I used EasyRecovery Pro 5.12, it's much better for extracting information, the problem with both of these programs, they only extract information to another drive, they don't do any fixing.

So all in all, i've lost 5gb of data, and i'm still trying to assess the damages to the rest of the files I have extracted.

But again, thank you!

[Fred©]

Dont you use Norton SystemWorks or Ontrack Fix it? Both have snapshot or image features to recover MBRs...

Also you can try the manufacturer site of you hard drive... I have western digital 40 GB caviar that came with a floppy disk to recover from this kinda disaster...

Seagate has a similar tool, called DiskWizard2000...

Fred©

[Fred©]

Hey Sefy,

I know your computer is screwed up because you used PowerQuest Partition Magic, but maybe you can fix partition using another software from PowerQuest.

Take a look at http://www.powerquest.com/volumemanager/

Fred©

[avl1]

Sefy, are sure that only the MBR and partition table are gone? You can restore the MBR using fdisk with /mbr command line option. But on the second drive you don't even need it, since it's just a small bootstrap code to load an OS from the active partition. If you had a single partition on that drive and need to recreate its record in the partition table, you can simply create the new partition so that it spans the whole drive. Unfortunately, I don't remember if fdisk erases the boot sector when you create a partition. There is a nice partition manager program you can find at http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part. I didn't use it for a while, so I don't remember, but I think it will allow you to manually create or fix a partition. I would save the current partition table/boot sector just in case before doing the changes.

[Sefy]

Fred@, Nope unfortunatly I didn't have nither of the programs, so I didn't have an image file, at any rate, it is now too late, i've had to reformat my drive, I did manage to extract some data out of it to another drive, so not all is lost, but I have lost around 5gb, thank you for the suggestions!

avl1, yup, only the MBR and Partition Table were gone, and as for FDISK, it can only repair the MBR on the primary drive, and it's basicly good only if your boot drive got curropted but you can still see the drive itself, it doesn't work if you can't even see the drive in a DOS prompt.

Guys, i'd like to again say thanks for all the efforts you have given to help me, unfortunatly, i'm not at the position that can't be reveresed anymore, as i was forced to use a program to extract the information to another drive and then format my own drive and restore back the files into it.

The good news is, tommorow i'll be getting myself a spanking brand new 120gb HDD to replace my 45gb (so i'll have 1x45gb and 1x120gb) so i'll have more room for programs!

[jeex]

maybe use the 45 gb to back up "critical data" (aka porn, heh)?

[Sefy]

More like i'm selling it so I can get some money back, you guys may not know this, but HDD's cost a fortune in Israel, it's like a 100$ diffrence from the prices you guys in the US buy them! and i'm not rich and loaded

[SanitizeME]

I don't know if this matters anymore but it seems to me that your partition would be screwed no matter what. When Windows 2000 converted the partition it unlocked the volume and my guess would be that somehow, someway, Powerquest Partition Magic 7 and Windows conflicted and resulted in your volume not being probably locked. You know how when you use the convert tool with Windows 2000 and it asks you to restart since it can not unlock the volume because you are using it? Well, the process of re-locking it must have screwed up. There is (I think) no way to fix this. I got the same problem and it resulted in a re-partition and a reformat. When I restarted I received the "missing operating system" message. I tried all possible avenues but to no avail. I used lots of programs and none of them work. They detected the volume but could not get it to work. You can't really be prepare for this sort of problems. When it comes it comes.

[Sefy]

SanitizeME, from what you are saying, it sounds like when you tell it to convert from FAT32 to NTFS or something of that sorts, in my case, seems like 2000 decided to do something on it's own for no reason, cause while I was on 2000 that last time, i accessd my D, and then i booted up to my 98SE, and then it couldn't see D anymore, when i used FDISK it said it's empty partition, so then i used Partition Magic and it detected a curroption of the boot record, so i guess i was stupid enough to let it fix it.

Either way. all gone now, i got out what i could, i've removed my 2000 and i guarntee you i ain't gonna be using it anymore, for 2 years i've not had a single problem with my PC with just using my OS/2 and 98SE, and just having 2000 for a month and i had nothing but problems, no chance i'm using that pathetic excuse of an OS again.

[SatStorm]

Hi Sefy, sorry to hear from you a disaster like this
It use to happen to me all the time...
Then I install service pack 1 & 2 for W2K. They improve the os a lot.
Also, a good amplifier is a must with w2k... With this OS, a system report of not enough power, shutdown the PC without asking. That, most of the times, f*ck up your HD till your last boot...
A good amplifier helps with that.

[Sefy]

SatStorm, thank you! as for my system, I had Win2k with SP2 and SRP1 and all the Windows Update fixes, Win2k is just not an OS, I couldn't even load some of my programs, and I was using 98SE more anyway, so I got rid of 2k compeltly now, and now I got more room for my 98SE.

[spidey]

Sefy,

This may be a very simple question, but it's one I wanted to make sure you thought of.

When you couldn't see your d: drive, were you in 98 ? Going with this, did Partition Magic / or your 2000 Disc manager convert that partition to NTFS ?

If so, 98 can't view NTFS which would explain why it was not there. I am sure you thought of this though.

I had Partition Magic tank a few partitions. I think that that is the culprit in writing a corrupt MBR more so that 2000.

Glad you're up and rolling again despite the loss

Hope all is well and safe Bro

[Craig Tucker]

Sefy
You say you have just bought a new 120 GB drive, was wondering if you might be able to help me.

I bought an IBM deskstar 120GB as a secondary drive to my Maxtor 30GB. I installed the drive ran Fdisk but it only reported the drive as being 58GB. Went to IBM's web site and downloaded diskmanager 2000 (by the way I was running win 98se). Partitioned and formatted as one large 120GB drive. All I thought was well.

I copied all of my mpeg VCD files from my C drive to my new D drive, but did not delete them straight away from the C drive Thank goodness. These files amounted to approximately 10GB.

I was then doing some capturing with VDub when it reported the error no more space on drive D. Looked in explorer and everyting in drive D was messed up, files and directories looked like they were written in wingdings font.

Downloaded an Fdisk patch and tried repartitioning and formatting, drive was now only reportred as being about 12GB. Rebooted windows and it would not start not even in safe mode, somehow all my VXD files are missing from the system directory, hav'nt been able to get it started since.

Now this is'nt too much of a crisis because I have got an epox 8k7a+ motherboard new processor and memory coming tomorrow and I would of had to rebuild my system anyway, and I hav'nt really lost too much data it is still all on the C drive.

I am planning on going to Win XP pro with NTFS, what I want to know is what software to use to partition the new drive so that it is stable. Presumably fdisk is no longer adequate with such large hard drives. Does XP come with its own software to perform this function.

I also have a 40 GB maxtor which is empty but formatted to FAT32. The plan is to format this drive to NTFS and load the operating system onto it. Then install the 30GB drive and transfer all my data files across and then format this drive to NTFS. And finally to install the 120GB drive and format to NTFS.

I know this takes a lot of reading but I wanted to give you as much information as possible.

Many Thanks

Craig

[Sefy]

Spidey, my D drive was FAT32, I dislike NTFS specificly for the reason you can't access it using DOS mode in any program, also, the drive was not even visible in 2000 after I tried booting back to it.

By the way, I have a Read/Write NTFS driver for Windows98 ;o)


craigtucker, well, I have ordered it, but looks like i'll only be getting it on sunday, so i can't answer you yet regarding your questions, however, i'll tell you in advance, that even if someone paid me, I would not buy any of these drives: Maxtor (the #1 worst drive!), Seagate (the #2 worst drive), IBM and Quantum.

I bought myself the Western Digital 120gb with 8mb Cache, and as for your question, I believe HDD size limitation is a BIOS problem, try updaring your BIOS to see if that fixes it, or try reporting to EPoX, they have great and fast technicial support!