Hard drive crash - any help?
My HD has crashed, the OS is Windows 2000 Server. Right at the start of the boot process it says "Error loading operating system".
Running the recovery console from the Win2k - a chkdsk reports that "The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems"
I tried a fixmbr too, but with no luck.
It doesn't sound too good. I'm running on a back up HD, done about a month ago. I've taken the RZX Archive down, trying to keep stuff running to a minimum.
When my HD crashes, why is it always when I'm unrarring big .rar files? It did this a couple of years back, but the recovery console chkdsk fixed the problem.
Running the recovery console from the Win2k - a chkdsk reports that "The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems"
I tried a fixmbr too, but with no luck.
It doesn't sound too good. I'm running on a back up HD, done about a month ago. I've taken the RZX Archive down, trying to keep stuff running to a minimum.
When my HD crashes, why is it always when I'm unrarring big .rar files? It did this a couple of years back, but the recovery console chkdsk fixed the problem.
Post edited by Daren on
Comments
Do you think the fdisk /mbr option might help? See this article for more info: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/69013.
Perhaps this site may help too: http://www.bootdisk.com/
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
No :-(
Windows sees it as drive E, but when you click on it a message like "error: invalid parameter" appears, and you can't view anything on it.
I've recovered partitions from worse situations before.
How big is the disk? Do you have a blank hard disk, the same size or bigger, and a Linux live CD or DVD to boot from?
If you PM me your phone number, I'll call you tomorrow with more advice.
Skarpo
:-)
The partition table must still exist, or Daren's computer wouldn't have been able to observe a drive E with the disk mounted as a slave. Whether the partition table is corrupted or not is a different matter.
My guess is that the boot sector has been corrupted, so the partition information is no longer valid. This can be fixed by creating a partition of the same size on a separate disk, then using Linux (as a superuser) to copy its boot sector over onto the original disk. This isn't perfect - it leaves the record of the amount of free space wrong - but that is easily fixed by chkdsk or fsck.
I just hope that Daren hasn't run into the LBA48 bug, whereby writing data to a disk with 128GB on it, in an operating system that isn't compatible with LBA48, causes the disk write to wrap around to the beginning of the disk and overwrite the system information. That problem is extremely difficult to fix.
I have had success with knackered HDs and PM being able to "fix" the issue(s) ... and one or two where PM didn't help the situation ... but I totally leave that up to each person whether it's something advisable to use or not. Each "technician" uses their own "magic" tools ;-)
I used to use Diskedit back in the day for every HD issue, where I was able to do so ... nowadays OSes tend to be a bit more "secretive" and not as tolerant to FAT/boot sector/etc manipulation but there are tools out there which can come in handy.
In any case ... Good Luck! (and don't try fixing it after a few beers ;-) )
Skarpo
:-)
I don't have a spare blank HD, and no linux disks of any kind.
I think I'm gonna call it quits with this, and make do with my back up HD from a month ago. The main changes since then were loads of movies and stuff I downloaded but hadn't got around to burning :-(. There were also some changes to the RZX Archive, such as the video viewing page :-(
I'm going away today for a couple of days, and then I've got to study for an exam on Friday, so I haven't got much time at present.
I really appreciate your help and suggestions guys. Maybe after next weekend I'll try to salvage something off it, but at the moment I feel like tw@ting it with a baseball bat.
Cheers,
Daren
What I was going to suggest is that I stick these items in the post to you, and give you instructions on how to use the dd_rescue command to make an exact copy of the disk (in its current broken state), then you could send me the copied disk, and I could have a go at recovering the data for you after Easter.
That's the method for recovering data if the drive is making clunking noises due to the heads sticking.
I had Windows 2000 Pro and was writing dvd files to disk (D:\ partition) that i`d recorded off of sky when it first crashed.
chkdsk /r under Windows 2000 boot disk fixed the C:\ partition, and I was able to boot. But D:\ partiton was inaccessable, and said it wasn`t formatted, format now?
Partition Magic could see the partition though, so I ran chkdsk D: /f from the console. It eventually found and fixed all the problems (supposedly).
I then thought I better start backing stuff up onto dvd`s, so I checked the dvd files I was writing at the time of crash. When I tried deleting them, my disk locked up and sounded like it was jumping from the start to end of the disk in 5 reads (sound was almost musical notes).
Now I can`t access the disk at all to repair it, as its constantly jumping from the start to end of the disk the moment any power is on.
My harddisk is a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 160Gb ATA/133 8Mb Cache. Its nearly 2 years old. It has about 140Gb data on it. I too feel like taking a hammer to it. My motherboard is old Gigabyte with Athlon Tbird 1Ghz.
I have a new PC being delivered Monday. But desperatly need the data on my knackered disk.
My ZX Art Music Page
Carlos Michelis Theme
Are you using Service Pack 3 or later, and have you used http://www.48bitlba.com/enablebiglbatool.htm to enable LBA48 support?
If so, then you haven't overwritten all your old data, and there is still hope.
That sounds like a sticking heads problem.
Take the hard drive out of your computer, tap it once with the heel of your hand, and try applying power.
(This tap is about the right amount of force. In my experience, the usual advice of whacking it against a desk will just damage the disk further.)
If your partition is full of MPEG files and nothing else, and not too fragmented, it is also possible to use the MPEG header blocks (there's one every 2KB) to sort the data by the timestamps.
I'm horibly busy at the moment, but I can help you recover the data off your hard disk after Easter.
I`ve tried tapping with the heel of my hand a few times, first lightly then reasonably firm. (Not very hard)
There`s no change. Gently shaking the disk left/right it makes a whirring noise (anti-shock mechanism?). Theres only about 20gb of dvd .vts .vob files which are not of great importance, but just about 15000 .pdf of sheet music (my collection scanned/ocr`d took years), and lots of Cakewalk Sonar projects with 96khz recorded audio with a whole album nearly finished, tonnes of assembly source code and .tzx files made by myself, Schematic's + PCB layouts/cad project files + patent pending information emails etc for a buffered series wired wah/fuzz that is filter tuneable over 8 octaves(electric guitar/bass/keyboard effect pedal), personal data etc. And horribly fragmented. Thank you very kindly:)
There is no rush in recovering my data, but its important to me nonetheless.
I`ll post after easter.
Thanks
Frank
My ZX Art Music Page
Carlos Michelis Theme
It sounds like it's worth having the data recovered professionally.
I highly recommend Duncan Clarke of http://www.retrodata.co.uk - as well as having the best software available for rebuilding a partition that's been scrambled further by chkdsk, he has a laboratory and clean room, for recovering data when the disk drive heads are broken and need replacing.
It sounds like the arm that mounts one of the drive heads is probably cracked, which is why I recommended a moderate tap, not an almighty thwack.
Screw it... I`ll probably just carry on crying over losing 2 years of my life for the next 2 years. Think I`ll get a Western Digital disk next time, got one in this old pc now, its 6 years old and never had a bad sector.
Thanks anyway for help, and welcome to the forums.
My ZX Art Music Page
Carlos Michelis Theme
I`ll invest in a second drive next time. Also maybe I should`ve formatted to fat-32 in the first place for Win2000 instead of NTFS, but then again I got better audio performance with NTFS file system.
My ZX Art Music Page
Carlos Michelis Theme
If you want to stick the disk in the post to me, I can at least have a look at it. But I can't promise anything.
I'd imagine that almost all the raw data will still be on there: I'll slurp it onto a fresh disk using Linux. If you're lucky, most of the directory and file structure information will still be intact, because I am not sorting through fifty million clusters by hand.