A computer components & hardware forum. HardwareBanter

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   Home » HardwareBanter forum » General Hardware & Peripherals » Homebuilt PC's
Site Map Home Register Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

Best app for partition recovery



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #21  
Old February 18th 14, 03:53 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Paul
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 13,364
Default Best app for partition recovery

Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 13:13, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:22, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:13, Jim wrote:
On 17/02/2014 18:23, Flasherly wrote:
On Mon, 17 Feb 2014 11:46:28 -0500, wrote:

All I can suggest at this point, is to think carefully about
any changes made recently. Like BIOS changes just before
it could no longer mount.
Why I like "the idea" of coming off a docking station, so far as
setting up a drive. My largest DS firmware support being 2T, I've
certainly aways to go [w/out a 3T drive to my name], although being
USB, there should be a layer [of USB transpostions, i.e., from within
the station's firmware] non-specifically addressed to the MB's BIOS;-
interesting distinction how that differs from an added SATA port my
stations haven't.

Anyways, slap up that baby upside any ol' USB2/3 port, a baseline
compliancy, and the given software/OS originally used to establish the
drive's geometry [reported to the OS] theoretically should be good to
go to work.
Well i do have an IcyBox IB-RD4320STU3 so i will give that a bash
later and see if i can get any joy from that route.

Jim
OK well after putting the drive in the enclosure and booting it up in
win7 it was not showing up in windows explorer at all so i went to
disk management and it wasasking me to initialize the disk with
eityher MBR or GPT at this point i bottled it as dont want to write
anything to the drive yet, i do have my new 3TB black here right now
so i'm going to try to clone the broken 3tb onto the new one so i can
at least have a back up of it if i do something silly, I may look at
ebay and get a different kind of docking station as to be honest the
icybox i would not class as a dockling station myself.

Jim

Well thought the best thing was to put new drive inline and let
windows format it the way it wants to but oh no, went GPT route and
now it is now showing as 764.39GB, guys i'm begining to wonder if my
motherboard could be the issue here, i dont know why, sure it's an
older model Asus P5E3 Premium @ wifi
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5E3_PremiumWiFiAP_n

Anyone got a gun?

Jim

I have been thinking about this and was wondering could it be the drives
themselves? Reason i'm think this is i have bought the newer version of
the drive the AF format (WD3003FZEX instead of older WD3001FAEX drive) I
was told there was no real difference but who knows?
http://wd.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=760

Jim


Nope. I suggested Clearing CMOS as a cure.
Or, using Load Default Settings in the BIOS,
as an easier substitute. You will then need
to load any custom settings later (disable
peripheral chips, load custom RAM settings,
overclocks etc). If you've never ever used
custom settings, accepted the default IDE emulation
mode etc., then you'd have virtually nothing
additional to do.

There's no geometry in the MBR sector. There is
definitely geometry in the four primary partition
entry area, but that doesn't influence the overall
drive size. The BIOS can read the max_address out
of the drive, and convert it to a fake CHS. And in
Linux, it would appear the parameters to fdisk, are
"fakes" to influence how the primary partitions
are set up, rather than overriding anything in
a permanent way. I think I may have used that,
so I could test WinXP on a 56 sector alignment.
(Prep disk in Linux, and transfer files over later.)

So all I can figure, is the BIOS is doing it. If
the 3TB drive had never worked properly, I'd just
say "toss the motherboard". But it did work at
one time, so keep the motherboard. Try clearing
the CMOS (with all power removed - unplug the computer).
The green LED on an Asus motherboard, should not be
lit while using the CMOS jumper. Wait at least 60
seconds after unplugging, before making any changes
inside the machine. That's to give time for +5VSB to
"drain". The computer continues to draw current from
it, which is why it will drain. Someone suggested
pushing the power button on the front, to encourage
draining, but I consider that to be overkill. The
supply might not act sanely, while such a transient
happens.

Paul
  #22  
Old February 18th 14, 04:09 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Jim[_38_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 58
Default Best app for partition recovery

On 18/02/2014 14:53, Paul wrote:
Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 13:13, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:22, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:13, Jim wrote:
On 17/02/2014 18:23, Flasherly wrote:
On Mon, 17 Feb 2014 11:46:28 -0500, wrote:

All I can suggest at this point, is to think carefully about
any changes made recently. Like BIOS changes just before
it could no longer mount.
Why I like "the idea" of coming off a docking station, so far as
setting up a drive. My largest DS firmware support being 2T, I've
certainly aways to go [w/out a 3T drive to my name], although being
USB, there should be a layer [of USB transpostions, i.e., from
within
the station's firmware] non-specifically addressed to the MB's
BIOS;-
interesting distinction how that differs from an added SATA port my
stations haven't.

Anyways, slap up that baby upside any ol' USB2/3 port, a baseline
compliancy, and the given software/OS originally used to
establish the
drive's geometry [reported to the OS] theoretically should be
good to
go to work.
Well i do have an IcyBox IB-RD4320STU3 so i will give that a bash
later and see if i can get any joy from that route.

Jim
OK well after putting the drive in the enclosure and booting it up
in win7 it was not showing up in windows explorer at all so i went
to disk management and it wasasking me to initialize the disk with
eityher MBR or GPT at this point i bottled it as dont want to write
anything to the drive yet, i do have my new 3TB black here right
now so i'm going to try to clone the broken 3tb onto the new one so
i can at least have a back up of it if i do something silly, I may
look at ebay and get a different kind of docking station as to be
honest the icybox i would not class as a dockling station myself.

Jim
Well thought the best thing was to put new drive inline and let
windows format it the way it wants to but oh no, went GPT route and
now it is now showing as 764.39GB, guys i'm begining to wonder if my
motherboard could be the issue here, i dont know why, sure it's an
older model Asus P5E3 Premium @ wifi
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5E3_PremiumWiFiAP_n

Anyone got a gun?

Jim

I have been thinking about this and was wondering could it be the
drives themselves? Reason i'm think this is i have bought the newer
version of the drive the AF format (WD3003FZEX instead of older
WD3001FAEX drive) I was told there was no real difference but who knows?
http://wd.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=760

Jim


Nope. I suggested Clearing CMOS as a cure.
Or, using Load Default Settings in the BIOS,
as an easier substitute. You will then need
to load any custom settings later (disable
peripheral chips, load custom RAM settings,
overclocks etc). If you've never ever used
custom settings, accepted the default IDE emulation
mode etc., then you'd have virtually nothing
additional to do.

There's no geometry in the MBR sector. There is
definitely geometry in the four primary partition
entry area, but that doesn't influence the overall
drive size. The BIOS can read the max_address out
of the drive, and convert it to a fake CHS. And in
Linux, it would appear the parameters to fdisk, are
"fakes" to influence how the primary partitions
are set up, rather than overriding anything in
a permanent way. I think I may have used that,
so I could test WinXP on a 56 sector alignment.
(Prep disk in Linux, and transfer files over later.)

So all I can figure, is the BIOS is doing it. If
the 3TB drive had never worked properly, I'd just
say "toss the motherboard". But it did work at
one time, so keep the motherboard. Try clearing
the CMOS (with all power removed - unplug the computer).
The green LED on an Asus motherboard, should not be
lit while using the CMOS jumper. Wait at least 60
seconds after unplugging, before making any changes
inside the machine. That's to give time for +5VSB to
"drain". The computer continues to draw current from
it, which is why it will drain. Someone suggested
pushing the power button on the front, to encourage
draining, but I consider that to be overkill. The
supply might not act sanely, while such a transient
happens.

Paul

OK that's fine i'll do that this afternoon Paul, I have not reset the
bios in yonks and my bios is fairly standard apart from ACHI and
disableing sound etc so no overclcoking done here, i prefer stability
over performance, I'll post back later with an update.

Jim

P.S. Thanks for staying with me.


  #23  
Old February 18th 14, 04:09 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Flasherly[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,407
Default Best app for partition recovery

On Tue, 18 Feb 2014 12:22:05 +0000, Jim
wrote:

I may look at ebay and get a different
kind of docking station as to be honest the icybox i would not class as
a dockling station myself.


http://www.newegg.com/External-Enclo...Category/ID-92

Haven't looked much at them, earlier, last nite, for couple quick
reviews out of curiosity - say, the top-positioned Orico, which has 3T
firmware support for USB3/eSATA, so should be decent speeds (some
reviews were getting it, others not).

There's also going to be other 3T makes, of course, more money - not
that Orico's $38 is really cheap (potentially questionable make to
trust relatively expensive HDs, though $20 is all I've paid for my
Rosewills).

Sort them by popularity/most reviews and dig into the user
experiences, I suppose, if you're interested in the external route.
Beats the "leap of faith" on Ebay if not especially up on what make is
offered, (such as offbrand Singapore equipment imports), specs or a
broader reception for satisfied end users.

Appears likely that 3T firmware is going to be in the minority.
Conspicuously so when Thermaltake, a premier docking brand, I don't
offhand readily see positioned against lesser competitor brands among
3T offerings.

Without a solid MB USB3 performer mated correctly, there's only so
much worth in a futility involved in these things -- USB3 PCI cards
for docking stations and such. Get's expensive at some point, more
worth in just buying a good MB, in the first place;- all I've got in 3
docking stations, a PCI SATA 2-port controller is about $30, total.
Gets me by with a stack of 1.5T and 2T drives on 3 older, single-core
and earliest dual-core MBs. Slowly, needless to mention (I've a 115V
fan for sustainted "docking work" -eh.)
  #24  
Old February 19th 14, 04:14 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Jim[_38_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 58
Default Best app for partition recovery

On 18/02/2014 15:09, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 14:53, Paul wrote:
Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 13:13, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:22, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:13, Jim wrote:
On 17/02/2014 18:23, Flasherly wrote:
On Mon, 17 Feb 2014 11:46:28 -0500, wrote:

All I can suggest at this point, is to think carefully about
any changes made recently. Like BIOS changes just before
it could no longer mount.
Why I like "the idea" of coming off a docking station, so far as
setting up a drive. My largest DS firmware support being 2T, I've
certainly aways to go [w/out a 3T drive to my name], although being
USB, there should be a layer [of USB transpostions, i.e., from
within
the station's firmware] non-specifically addressed to the MB's
BIOS;-
interesting distinction how that differs from an added SATA port my
stations haven't.

Anyways, slap up that baby upside any ol' USB2/3 port, a baseline
compliancy, and the given software/OS originally used to
establish the
drive's geometry [reported to the OS] theoretically should be
good to
go to work.
Well i do have an IcyBox IB-RD4320STU3 so i will give that a bash
later and see if i can get any joy from that route.

Jim
OK well after putting the drive in the enclosure and booting it up
in win7 it was not showing up in windows explorer at all so i went
to disk management and it wasasking me to initialize the disk with
eityher MBR or GPT at this point i bottled it as dont want to
write anything to the drive yet, i do have my new 3TB black here
right now so i'm going to try to clone the broken 3tb onto the new
one so i can at least have a back up of it if i do something
silly, I may look at ebay and get a different kind of docking
station as to be honest the icybox i would not class as a dockling
station myself.

Jim
Well thought the best thing was to put new drive inline and let
windows format it the way it wants to but oh no, went GPT route and
now it is now showing as 764.39GB, guys i'm begining to wonder if
my motherboard could be the issue here, i dont know why, sure it's
an older model Asus P5E3 Premium @ wifi
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5E3_PremiumWiFiAP_n

Anyone got a gun?

Jim
I have been thinking about this and was wondering could it be the
drives themselves? Reason i'm think this is i have bought the newer
version of the drive the AF format (WD3003FZEX instead of older
WD3001FAEX drive) I was told there was no real difference but who
knows?
http://wd.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=760

Jim


Nope. I suggested Clearing CMOS as a cure.
Or, using Load Default Settings in the BIOS,
as an easier substitute. You will then need
to load any custom settings later (disable
peripheral chips, load custom RAM settings,
overclocks etc). If you've never ever used
custom settings, accepted the default IDE emulation
mode etc., then you'd have virtually nothing
additional to do.

There's no geometry in the MBR sector. There is
definitely geometry in the four primary partition
entry area, but that doesn't influence the overall
drive size. The BIOS can read the max_address out
of the drive, and convert it to a fake CHS. And in
Linux, it would appear the parameters to fdisk, are
"fakes" to influence how the primary partitions
are set up, rather than overriding anything in
a permanent way. I think I may have used that,
so I could test WinXP on a 56 sector alignment.
(Prep disk in Linux, and transfer files over later.)

So all I can figure, is the BIOS is doing it. If
the 3TB drive had never worked properly, I'd just
say "toss the motherboard". But it did work at
one time, so keep the motherboard. Try clearing
the CMOS (with all power removed - unplug the computer).
The green LED on an Asus motherboard, should not be
lit while using the CMOS jumper. Wait at least 60
seconds after unplugging, before making any changes
inside the machine. That's to give time for +5VSB to
"drain". The computer continues to draw current from
it, which is why it will drain. Someone suggested
pushing the power button on the front, to encourage
draining, but I consider that to be overkill. The
supply might not act sanely, while such a transient
happens.

Paul

OK that's fine i'll do that this afternoon Paul, I have not reset the
bios in yonks and my bios is fairly standard apart from ACHI and
disableing sound etc so no overclcoking done here, i prefer stability
over performance, I'll post back later with an update.

Jim

P.S. Thanks for staying with me.


Well bios is still showing it as 801.6GB despite the fact i can see it
as 3TB in various boot discs i have picked up along the way (hirens
etc), I have scanned WD forum and tried what is mentioned here
http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-M...it/td-p/370397

but still coming up with 750 odd GB options even tried linux partition
app (sorry can't remember name it's 3am here) but coming into windows
still gives me 746.52GB Unallocated as i have not even bothered
formatting it.

I have a few more htings to try someone has mentioned about my bios may
be truncating (spelling) my drive so i have to run some tests on that
later but it's gone 3am here (London) and i'm dead so going to call it a
night I will post with some results later for you to have a nose over.

Nite all

Jim
  #25  
Old February 19th 14, 12:14 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Jim[_38_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 58
Default Best app for partition recovery

On 19/02/2014 03:14, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 15:09, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 14:53, Paul wrote:
Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 13:13, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:22, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:13, Jim wrote:
On 17/02/2014 18:23, Flasherly wrote:
On Mon, 17 Feb 2014 11:46:28 -0500,
wrote:

All I can suggest at this point, is to think carefully about
any changes made recently. Like BIOS changes just before
it could no longer mount.
Why I like "the idea" of coming off a docking station, so far as
setting up a drive. My largest DS firmware support being 2T, I've
certainly aways to go [w/out a 3T drive to my name], although
being
USB, there should be a layer [of USB transpostions, i.e., from
within
the station's firmware] non-specifically addressed to the MB's
BIOS;-
interesting distinction how that differs from an added SATA
port my
stations haven't.

Anyways, slap up that baby upside any ol' USB2/3 port, a baseline
compliancy, and the given software/OS originally used to
establish the
drive's geometry [reported to the OS] theoretically should be
good to
go to work.
Well i do have an IcyBox IB-RD4320STU3 so i will give that a
bash later and see if i can get any joy from that route.

Jim
OK well after putting the drive in the enclosure and booting it
up in win7 it was not showing up in windows explorer at all so i
went to disk management and it wasasking me to initialize the
disk with eityher MBR or GPT at this point i bottled it as dont
want to write anything to the drive yet, i do have my new 3TB
black here right now so i'm going to try to clone the broken 3tb
onto the new one so i can at least have a back up of it if i do
something silly, I may look at ebay and get a different kind of
docking station as to be honest the icybox i would not class as a
dockling station myself.

Jim
Well thought the best thing was to put new drive inline and let
windows format it the way it wants to but oh no, went GPT route
and now it is now showing as 764.39GB, guys i'm begining to wonder
if my motherboard could be the issue here, i dont know why, sure
it's an older model Asus P5E3 Premium @ wifi
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5E3_PremiumWiFiAP_n

Anyone got a gun?

Jim
I have been thinking about this and was wondering could it be the
drives themselves? Reason i'm think this is i have bought the newer
version of the drive the AF format (WD3003FZEX instead of older
WD3001FAEX drive) I was told there was no real difference but who
knows?
http://wd.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=760

Jim

Nope. I suggested Clearing CMOS as a cure.
Or, using Load Default Settings in the BIOS,
as an easier substitute. You will then need
to load any custom settings later (disable
peripheral chips, load custom RAM settings,
overclocks etc). If you've never ever used
custom settings, accepted the default IDE emulation
mode etc., then you'd have virtually nothing
additional to do.

There's no geometry in the MBR sector. There is
definitely geometry in the four primary partition
entry area, but that doesn't influence the overall
drive size. The BIOS can read the max_address out
of the drive, and convert it to a fake CHS. And in
Linux, it would appear the parameters to fdisk, are
"fakes" to influence how the primary partitions
are set up, rather than overriding anything in
a permanent way. I think I may have used that,
so I could test WinXP on a 56 sector alignment.
(Prep disk in Linux, and transfer files over later.)

So all I can figure, is the BIOS is doing it. If
the 3TB drive had never worked properly, I'd just
say "toss the motherboard". But it did work at
one time, so keep the motherboard. Try clearing
the CMOS (with all power removed - unplug the computer).
The green LED on an Asus motherboard, should not be
lit while using the CMOS jumper. Wait at least 60
seconds after unplugging, before making any changes
inside the machine. That's to give time for +5VSB to
"drain". The computer continues to draw current from
it, which is why it will drain. Someone suggested
pushing the power button on the front, to encourage
draining, but I consider that to be overkill. The
supply might not act sanely, while such a transient
happens.

Paul

OK that's fine i'll do that this afternoon Paul, I have not reset the
bios in yonks and my bios is fairly standard apart from ACHI and
disableing sound etc so no overclcoking done here, i prefer stability
over performance, I'll post back later with an update.

Jim

P.S. Thanks for staying with me.


Well bios is still showing it as 801.6GB despite the fact i can see it
as 3TB in various boot discs i have picked up along the way (hirens
etc), I have scanned WD forum and tried what is mentioned here
http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-M...it/td-p/370397


but still coming up with 750 odd GB options even tried linux partition
app (sorry can't remember name it's 3am here) but coming into windows
still gives me 746.52GB Unallocated as i have not even bothered
formatting it.

I have a few more htings to try someone has mentioned about my bios
may be truncating (spelling) my drive so i have to run some tests on
that later but it's gone 3am here (London) and i'm dead so going to
call it a night I will post with some results later for you to have a
nose over.

Nite all

Jim

Well havng slept on it i thought i'd try something different and that
meant i'd hook up the new (empty) 3TB to my Adaptec RAID 1430SA
controller which i know supports 3TB drives, so booted into windows went
into Disk management and formatted perfectly, so then shut down and put
the new 3TB back onto the motherboaurds SATA controllers to see what the
bios would say and it's coming up again at 801.6GB so i'm sure some of
my problem come from my motherboard.
So i'm now going to hook up the original drive and see if i can image
that but to be honest i'm not sure if i can but worth a go, then i'll
hook that drive up to the raid controller and see if i can do any
recovery work on that.

Jim
  #26  
Old February 19th 14, 03:34 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Paul
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 13,364
Default Best app for partition recovery

Jim wrote:
On 19/02/2014 03:14, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 15:09, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 14:53, Paul wrote:
Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 13:13, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:22, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:13, Jim wrote:
On 17/02/2014 18:23, Flasherly wrote:
On Mon, 17 Feb 2014 11:46:28 -0500,
wrote:

All I can suggest at this point, is to think carefully about
any changes made recently. Like BIOS changes just before
it could no longer mount.
Why I like "the idea" of coming off a docking station, so far as
setting up a drive. My largest DS firmware support being 2T, I've
certainly aways to go [w/out a 3T drive to my name], although
being
USB, there should be a layer [of USB transpostions, i.e., from
within
the station's firmware] non-specifically addressed to the MB's
BIOS;-
interesting distinction how that differs from an added SATA
port my
stations haven't.

Anyways, slap up that baby upside any ol' USB2/3 port, a baseline
compliancy, and the given software/OS originally used to
establish the
drive's geometry [reported to the OS] theoretically should be
good to
go to work.
Well i do have an IcyBox IB-RD4320STU3 so i will give that a
bash later and see if i can get any joy from that route.

Jim
OK well after putting the drive in the enclosure and booting it
up in win7 it was not showing up in windows explorer at all so i
went to disk management and it wasasking me to initialize the
disk with eityher MBR or GPT at this point i bottled it as dont
want to write anything to the drive yet, i do have my new 3TB
black here right now so i'm going to try to clone the broken 3tb
onto the new one so i can at least have a back up of it if i do
something silly, I may look at ebay and get a different kind of
docking station as to be honest the icybox i would not class as a
dockling station myself.

Jim
Well thought the best thing was to put new drive inline and let
windows format it the way it wants to but oh no, went GPT route
and now it is now showing as 764.39GB, guys i'm begining to wonder
if my motherboard could be the issue here, i dont know why, sure
it's an older model Asus P5E3 Premium @ wifi
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5E3_PremiumWiFiAP_n

Anyone got a gun?

Jim
I have been thinking about this and was wondering could it be the
drives themselves? Reason i'm think this is i have bought the newer
version of the drive the AF format (WD3003FZEX instead of older
WD3001FAEX drive) I was told there was no real difference but who
knows?
http://wd.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=760

Jim

Nope. I suggested Clearing CMOS as a cure.
Or, using Load Default Settings in the BIOS,
as an easier substitute. You will then need
to load any custom settings later (disable
peripheral chips, load custom RAM settings,
overclocks etc). If you've never ever used
custom settings, accepted the default IDE emulation
mode etc., then you'd have virtually nothing
additional to do.

There's no geometry in the MBR sector. There is
definitely geometry in the four primary partition
entry area, but that doesn't influence the overall
drive size. The BIOS can read the max_address out
of the drive, and convert it to a fake CHS. And in
Linux, it would appear the parameters to fdisk, are
"fakes" to influence how the primary partitions
are set up, rather than overriding anything in
a permanent way. I think I may have used that,
so I could test WinXP on a 56 sector alignment.
(Prep disk in Linux, and transfer files over later.)

So all I can figure, is the BIOS is doing it. If
the 3TB drive had never worked properly, I'd just
say "toss the motherboard". But it did work at
one time, so keep the motherboard. Try clearing
the CMOS (with all power removed - unplug the computer).
The green LED on an Asus motherboard, should not be
lit while using the CMOS jumper. Wait at least 60
seconds after unplugging, before making any changes
inside the machine. That's to give time for +5VSB to
"drain". The computer continues to draw current from
it, which is why it will drain. Someone suggested
pushing the power button on the front, to encourage
draining, but I consider that to be overkill. The
supply might not act sanely, while such a transient
happens.

Paul
OK that's fine i'll do that this afternoon Paul, I have not reset the
bios in yonks and my bios is fairly standard apart from ACHI and
disableing sound etc so no overclcoking done here, i prefer stability
over performance, I'll post back later with an update.

Jim

P.S. Thanks for staying with me.


Well bios is still showing it as 801.6GB despite the fact i can see it
as 3TB in various boot discs i have picked up along the way (hirens
etc), I have scanned WD forum and tried what is mentioned here
http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-M...it/td-p/370397


but still coming up with 750 odd GB options even tried linux partition
app (sorry can't remember name it's 3am here) but coming into windows
still gives me 746.52GB Unallocated as i have not even bothered
formatting it.

I have a few more htings to try someone has mentioned about my bios
may be truncating (spelling) my drive so i have to run some tests on
that later but it's gone 3am here (London) and i'm dead so going to
call it a night I will post with some results later for you to have a
nose over.

Nite all

Jim

Well havng slept on it i thought i'd try something different and that
meant i'd hook up the new (empty) 3TB to my Adaptec RAID 1430SA
controller which i know supports 3TB drives, so booted into windows went
into Disk management and formatted perfectly, so then shut down and put
the new 3TB back onto the motherboaurds SATA controllers to see what the
bios would say and it's coming up again at 801.6GB so i'm sure some of
my problem come from my motherboard.
So i'm now going to hook up the original drive and see if i can image
that but to be honest i'm not sure if i can but worth a go, then i'll
hook that drive up to the raid controller and see if i can do any
recovery work on that.

Jim


As I said before, if all else were to fail, you can still locate the
start of the NTFS file system, and loopback mount it in Linux. All
the data should be there. Then, in Linux, you'd format the new
drive, and transfer the data over.

The loopback mount (-o loop), with appropriate offset, is a way to
pick off a file system when the header no longer points to it.

GPT stuff... mumble mumble NTFS_header ... NTFS_data
^
|
Set offset to here.

But both drives should still foul up in Windows again. Until the
mystery of where the errant geometry is coming from, is solved.

When I used that technique in Linux, I was able to mount the NTFS
partition above the 2TiB mark. Proving that offsets above 2TiB, work.
Data transfer was pretty slow (10MB/sec, versus the normal 135MB/sec
or better), but it's better than nothing.

If you fired up Linux and the drive was correctly identified
from the start, then you'd suspect that somehow, a drive overlay
got loaded in Windows. This is another thing that can work
under the hood. I don't know if they make a DDO to solve large
drive problems or not. You'll notice "Kroll Ontrack" is
mentioned in this article, and Ontrack software is typically provided
on disk manufacturer web sites (while they're still licensing and
paying Kroll for it).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Drive_Overlay

Have a look at your Add/Remove, and see if you can figure out
what software was added to your computer, around the time
the geometry went to hell.

Paul
  #27  
Old February 19th 14, 09:54 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Jim[_38_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 58
Default Best app for partition recovery

On 19/02/2014 14:34, Paul wrote:
Jim wrote:
On 19/02/2014 03:14, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 15:09, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 14:53, Paul wrote:
Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 13:13, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:22, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:13, Jim wrote:
On 17/02/2014 18:23, Flasherly wrote:
On Mon, 17 Feb 2014 11:46:28 -0500,
wrote:

All I can suggest at this point, is to think carefully about
any changes made recently. Like BIOS changes just before
it could no longer mount.
Why I like "the idea" of coming off a docking station, so far as
setting up a drive. My largest DS firmware support being 2T,
I've
certainly aways to go [w/out a 3T drive to my name], although
being
USB, there should be a layer [of USB transpostions, i.e.,
from within
the station's firmware] non-specifically addressed to the
MB's BIOS;-
interesting distinction how that differs from an added SATA
port my
stations haven't.

Anyways, slap up that baby upside any ol' USB2/3 port, a
baseline
compliancy, and the given software/OS originally used to
establish the
drive's geometry [reported to the OS] theoretically should be
good to
go to work.
Well i do have an IcyBox IB-RD4320STU3 so i will give that a
bash later and see if i can get any joy from that route.

Jim
OK well after putting the drive in the enclosure and booting it
up in win7 it was not showing up in windows explorer at all so
i went to disk management and it wasasking me to initialize the
disk with eityher MBR or GPT at this point i bottled it as dont
want to write anything to the drive yet, i do have my new 3TB
black here right now so i'm going to try to clone the broken
3tb onto the new one so i can at least have a back up of it if
i do something silly, I may look at ebay and get a different
kind of docking station as to be honest the icybox i would not
class as a dockling station myself.

Jim
Well thought the best thing was to put new drive inline and let
windows format it the way it wants to but oh no, went GPT route
and now it is now showing as 764.39GB, guys i'm begining to
wonder if my motherboard could be the issue here, i dont know
why, sure it's an older model Asus P5E3 Premium @ wifi
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5E3_PremiumWiFiAP_n

Anyone got a gun?

Jim
I have been thinking about this and was wondering could it be the
drives themselves? Reason i'm think this is i have bought the
newer version of the drive the AF format (WD3003FZEX instead of
older WD3001FAEX drive) I was told there was no real difference
but who knows?
http://wd.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=760

Jim

Nope. I suggested Clearing CMOS as a cure.
Or, using Load Default Settings in the BIOS,
as an easier substitute. You will then need
to load any custom settings later (disable
peripheral chips, load custom RAM settings,
overclocks etc). If you've never ever used
custom settings, accepted the default IDE emulation
mode etc., then you'd have virtually nothing
additional to do.

There's no geometry in the MBR sector. There is
definitely geometry in the four primary partition
entry area, but that doesn't influence the overall
drive size. The BIOS can read the max_address out
of the drive, and convert it to a fake CHS. And in
Linux, it would appear the parameters to fdisk, are
"fakes" to influence how the primary partitions
are set up, rather than overriding anything in
a permanent way. I think I may have used that,
so I could test WinXP on a 56 sector alignment.
(Prep disk in Linux, and transfer files over later.)

So all I can figure, is the BIOS is doing it. If
the 3TB drive had never worked properly, I'd just
say "toss the motherboard". But it did work at
one time, so keep the motherboard. Try clearing
the CMOS (with all power removed - unplug the computer).
The green LED on an Asus motherboard, should not be
lit while using the CMOS jumper. Wait at least 60
seconds after unplugging, before making any changes
inside the machine. That's to give time for +5VSB to
"drain". The computer continues to draw current from
it, which is why it will drain. Someone suggested
pushing the power button on the front, to encourage
draining, but I consider that to be overkill. The
supply might not act sanely, while such a transient
happens.

Paul
OK that's fine i'll do that this afternoon Paul, I have not reset
the bios in yonks and my bios is fairly standard apart from ACHI
and disableing sound etc so no overclcoking done here, i prefer
stability over performance, I'll post back later with an update.

Jim

P.S. Thanks for staying with me.


Well bios is still showing it as 801.6GB despite the fact i can see
it as 3TB in various boot discs i have picked up along the way
(hirens etc), I have scanned WD forum and tried what is mentioned here
http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-M...it/td-p/370397


but still coming up with 750 odd GB options even tried linux
partition app (sorry can't remember name it's 3am here) but coming
into windows still gives me 746.52GB Unallocated as i have not even
bothered formatting it.

I have a few more htings to try someone has mentioned about my bios
may be truncating (spelling) my drive so i have to run some tests on
that later but it's gone 3am here (London) and i'm dead so going to
call it a night I will post with some results later for you to have
a nose over.

Nite all

Jim

Well havng slept on it i thought i'd try something different and that
meant i'd hook up the new (empty) 3TB to my Adaptec RAID 1430SA
controller which i know supports 3TB drives, so booted into windows
went into Disk management and formatted perfectly, so then shut down
and put the new 3TB back onto the motherboaurds SATA controllers to
see what the bios would say and it's coming up again at 801.6GB so
i'm sure some of my problem come from my motherboard.
So i'm now going to hook up the original drive and see if i can image
that but to be honest i'm not sure if i can but worth a go, then i'll
hook that drive up to the raid controller and see if i can do any
recovery work on that.

Jim


As I said before, if all else were to fail, you can still locate the
start of the NTFS file system, and loopback mount it in Linux. All
the data should be there. Then, in Linux, you'd format the new
drive, and transfer the data over.

The loopback mount (-o loop), with appropriate offset, is a way to
pick off a file system when the header no longer points to it.

GPT stuff... mumble mumble NTFS_header ... NTFS_data
^
|
Set offset to here.

But both drives should still foul up in Windows again. Until the
mystery of where the errant geometry is coming from, is solved.

When I used that technique in Linux, I was able to mount the NTFS
partition above the 2TiB mark. Proving that offsets above 2TiB, work.
Data transfer was pretty slow (10MB/sec, versus the normal 135MB/sec
or better), but it's better than nothing.

If you fired up Linux and the drive was correctly identified
from the start, then you'd suspect that somehow, a drive overlay
got loaded in Windows. This is another thing that can work
under the hood. I don't know if they make a DDO to solve large
drive problems or not. You'll notice "Kroll Ontrack" is
mentioned in this article, and Ontrack software is typically provided
on disk manufacturer web sites (while they're still licensing and
paying Kroll for it).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Drive_Overlay

Have a look at your Add/Remove, and see if you can figure out
what software was added to your computer, around the time
the geometry went to hell.

Paul

OK Thanks Paul trouble is what i know about Linux could be wrote on the
back of a postage stamp, and room to spare come to think of it, any
pointers on what iso is best to grab and even a link for it, and then i
can look at going down that route as well, from my point iof view i have
nothing to loose.

Jim
  #28  
Old February 20th 14, 12:03 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Paul
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 13,364
Default Best app for partition recovery

Jim wrote:
On 19/02/2014 14:34, Paul wrote:
Jim wrote:
On 19/02/2014 03:14, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 15:09, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 14:53, Paul wrote:
Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 13:13, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:22, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:13, Jim wrote:
On 17/02/2014 18:23, Flasherly wrote:
On Mon, 17 Feb 2014 11:46:28 -0500,
wrote:

All I can suggest at this point, is to think carefully about
any changes made recently. Like BIOS changes just before
it could no longer mount.
Why I like "the idea" of coming off a docking station, so far as
setting up a drive. My largest DS firmware support being 2T,
I've
certainly aways to go [w/out a 3T drive to my name], although
being
USB, there should be a layer [of USB transpostions, i.e.,
from within
the station's firmware] non-specifically addressed to the
MB's BIOS;-
interesting distinction how that differs from an added SATA
port my
stations haven't.

Anyways, slap up that baby upside any ol' USB2/3 port, a
baseline
compliancy, and the given software/OS originally used to
establish the
drive's geometry [reported to the OS] theoretically should be
good to
go to work.
Well i do have an IcyBox IB-RD4320STU3 so i will give that a
bash later and see if i can get any joy from that route.

Jim
OK well after putting the drive in the enclosure and booting it
up in win7 it was not showing up in windows explorer at all so
i went to disk management and it wasasking me to initialize the
disk with eityher MBR or GPT at this point i bottled it as dont
want to write anything to the drive yet, i do have my new 3TB
black here right now so i'm going to try to clone the broken
3tb onto the new one so i can at least have a back up of it if
i do something silly, I may look at ebay and get a different
kind of docking station as to be honest the icybox i would not
class as a dockling station myself.

Jim
Well thought the best thing was to put new drive inline and let
windows format it the way it wants to but oh no, went GPT route
and now it is now showing as 764.39GB, guys i'm begining to
wonder if my motherboard could be the issue here, i dont know
why, sure it's an older model Asus P5E3 Premium @ wifi
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5E3_PremiumWiFiAP_n

Anyone got a gun?

Jim
I have been thinking about this and was wondering could it be the
drives themselves? Reason i'm think this is i have bought the
newer version of the drive the AF format (WD3003FZEX instead of
older WD3001FAEX drive) I was told there was no real difference
but who knows?
http://wd.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=760

Jim

Nope. I suggested Clearing CMOS as a cure.
Or, using Load Default Settings in the BIOS,
as an easier substitute. You will then need
to load any custom settings later (disable
peripheral chips, load custom RAM settings,
overclocks etc). If you've never ever used
custom settings, accepted the default IDE emulation
mode etc., then you'd have virtually nothing
additional to do.

There's no geometry in the MBR sector. There is
definitely geometry in the four primary partition
entry area, but that doesn't influence the overall
drive size. The BIOS can read the max_address out
of the drive, and convert it to a fake CHS. And in
Linux, it would appear the parameters to fdisk, are
"fakes" to influence how the primary partitions
are set up, rather than overriding anything in
a permanent way. I think I may have used that,
so I could test WinXP on a 56 sector alignment.
(Prep disk in Linux, and transfer files over later.)

So all I can figure, is the BIOS is doing it. If
the 3TB drive had never worked properly, I'd just
say "toss the motherboard". But it did work at
one time, so keep the motherboard. Try clearing
the CMOS (with all power removed - unplug the computer).
The green LED on an Asus motherboard, should not be
lit while using the CMOS jumper. Wait at least 60
seconds after unplugging, before making any changes
inside the machine. That's to give time for +5VSB to
"drain". The computer continues to draw current from
it, which is why it will drain. Someone suggested
pushing the power button on the front, to encourage
draining, but I consider that to be overkill. The
supply might not act sanely, while such a transient
happens.

Paul
OK that's fine i'll do that this afternoon Paul, I have not reset
the bios in yonks and my bios is fairly standard apart from ACHI
and disableing sound etc so no overclcoking done here, i prefer
stability over performance, I'll post back later with an update.

Jim

P.S. Thanks for staying with me.


Well bios is still showing it as 801.6GB despite the fact i can see
it as 3TB in various boot discs i have picked up along the way
(hirens etc), I have scanned WD forum and tried what is mentioned here
http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-M...it/td-p/370397


but still coming up with 750 odd GB options even tried linux
partition app (sorry can't remember name it's 3am here) but coming
into windows still gives me 746.52GB Unallocated as i have not even
bothered formatting it.

I have a few more htings to try someone has mentioned about my bios
may be truncating (spelling) my drive so i have to run some tests on
that later but it's gone 3am here (London) and i'm dead so going to
call it a night I will post with some results later for you to have
a nose over.

Nite all

Jim
Well havng slept on it i thought i'd try something different and that
meant i'd hook up the new (empty) 3TB to my Adaptec RAID 1430SA
controller which i know supports 3TB drives, so booted into windows
went into Disk management and formatted perfectly, so then shut down
and put the new 3TB back onto the motherboaurds SATA controllers to
see what the bios would say and it's coming up again at 801.6GB so
i'm sure some of my problem come from my motherboard.
So i'm now going to hook up the original drive and see if i can image
that but to be honest i'm not sure if i can but worth a go, then i'll
hook that drive up to the raid controller and see if i can do any
recovery work on that.

Jim


As I said before, if all else were to fail, you can still locate the
start of the NTFS file system, and loopback mount it in Linux. All
the data should be there. Then, in Linux, you'd format the new
drive, and transfer the data over.

The loopback mount (-o loop), with appropriate offset, is a way to
pick off a file system when the header no longer points to it.

GPT stuff... mumble mumble NTFS_header ... NTFS_data
^
|
Set offset to here.

But both drives should still foul up in Windows again. Until the
mystery of where the errant geometry is coming from, is solved.

When I used that technique in Linux, I was able to mount the NTFS
partition above the 2TiB mark. Proving that offsets above 2TiB, work.
Data transfer was pretty slow (10MB/sec, versus the normal 135MB/sec
or better), but it's better than nothing.

If you fired up Linux and the drive was correctly identified
from the start, then you'd suspect that somehow, a drive overlay
got loaded in Windows. This is another thing that can work
under the hood. I don't know if they make a DDO to solve large
drive problems or not. You'll notice "Kroll Ontrack" is
mentioned in this article, and Ontrack software is typically provided
on disk manufacturer web sites (while they're still licensing and
paying Kroll for it).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Drive_Overlay

Have a look at your Add/Remove, and see if you can figure out
what software was added to your computer, around the time
the geometry went to hell.

Paul

OK Thanks Paul trouble is what i know about Linux could be wrote on the
back of a postage stamp, and room to spare come to think of it, any
pointers on what iso is best to grab and even a link for it, and then i
can look at going down that route as well, from my point iof view i have
nothing to loose.

Jim


The one I keep on a USB key right now is Linux Mint (Mate Interface).
I keep what's called a persistent home directory (casper-rw), and that
saves my results from session to session. The rest of the files for
booting the OS, are read-only.

The My Computer on the upper left, has the partitions showing.
The lower-left corner has a menu with reboot stuff and a Terminal session.
Command line things are done from Terminal.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Mint_15_RC.jpg

http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

MATE 32-bit 64-bit An edition featuring the MATE desktop Multimedia=Yes

The 32 bit one should be good enough. Sometimes, things like 64 bit browsers
aren't available or the 64 bit plugins don't work. The 32 bit is safer in terms
of getting something out of it.

The ISO9660 file will be around 800+ MB. They make them a bit bigger
than CD sized now. Since I put mine on a USB stick, it doesn't cost me
anything in terms of non-renewables.

It's a pig at boot time. It's probably a 50% longer boot time than Ubuntu,
and I don't know exactly why. Even when a LiveCD is bloated, they don't
have to load every byte on the CD/DVD. But it sure feels like it in
this case. Even on the USB stick, at 30MB/sec, it's slow. Like, even
the menu in the lower-left corner, is slow to "wake up" and become
ready. The record for a free OS booting is 5 seconds, but this one
is a big loser in that contest. More like 3 minutes.

In Terminal, you preface commands with "sudo". It's like a "Run as Administrator".
For example, to get disk geometry, you could try in terminal

sudo hwinfo --disk

and it would scroll down the screen. The Terminal program preferences
can be set to infinite scrollback, so that no output from commands is lost.
By default, a Terminal session doesn't usually have that set large enough.

At shutdown, the OS will dismount partitions. I usually dismount
all the optional ones manually, but that's just a force of habit.

In Terminal, a command like (diskfree)

df

shows the mounted file systems.

And something like

sudo umount /mount/mint/partition_identify

would dismount a partition.

The manual pages are found by typing

man umount

and typing q to quit the manual page.

Anyway, the LiveCD is a useful thing to keep around, if you
run out of options otherwise. I like to compare hardware
behavior between OSes, to determine which are OS problems
and which are hardware problems. Even if triage there, isn't
of much use (i.e. no CHKDSK available). There is a chkdsk
type option, but all it does is set the dirty bit, forcing
Windows, the next time it is running, to fix up the partition.
There is no code in free Linux, to repair NTFS partitions.
A commercial Linux product is available, for around $100 or so
(dream on). There are certainly free software developers who
know NTFS inside-out, but nobody wants to write a CHKDSK.

Paul
 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
"OEM Partition" & Recovery partition on Dell Win7 PC Timothy Daniels[_4_] Dell Computers 5 May 7th 13 06:10 AM
Partition Recovery JohnB Storage (alternative) 2 January 29th 12 08:10 AM
Jsut bought a new Hard Drive. How do I copy both XP partition and Recovery Partition onto the new HD? lee Compaq Computers 1 August 1st 06 11:33 AM
Partition File Structure Recovery: NTFS Partition [email protected] General 1 September 9th 05 06:02 AM
Lost Partition/Data - Recovery? Partition? Filenames? dave Storage (alternative) 1 February 7th 05 06:37 PM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 03:00 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 HardwareBanter.
The comments are property of their posters.