Reboot or Select Proper Boot Device

I've seen the "Reboot or select proper boot device" on many forums, but haven't found any whose cause were like mine or whose resolution addressed my issue.

I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. Have been for a while. Today, as I felt Windows was slower than usual, I rebooted my PC (I usually just use sleep mode when I don't use it, although I usually reboot at least once every week or so).

When I rebooted my PC, I got a "Reboot or select proper boot device" message. My BIOS detects the Hard Drive, and is setup to boot directly to that PM drive. I don't have any disk in my DVD drive and no USB storage attached.

I plugged in my older hard drive as SM. That drive has Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit. I setup my BIOS to boot to PM first and SM second, and after pending for longer than usual on the blank screen w/ blinking cursor, it chose to boot to SM and to my Windows Vista.

From Vista, I ran DISKPART and sure enough, it sees both my hard drives. But my Disk 0, which is probably my PM, is marked as Unreadable instead of Online. I selected disk 0 and when I typed LIST PARTITION, it said that there were no partition on this disk to show.

Is my PM hard drive dead? Has all my data been lost? Or is Vista 32-bit's DISKPART simply unable to read the partitions from a Win7 64-bit drive?

Is there any way at all to re-create the partitions and get access to all my data located in my user directories? I don't care about loosing Windows or any installed software, I just want to get my data back.

 

Just more or less have become acquainted with partitioning, only because I bought a new hard drive that was preformatted for use as a dvr drive. With that, I had to use EaseUs Partition Master to get rid of the formatted partitions and then change the disk from logical to primary before I could format it NTFS to use as a backup drive in the PC. Do you know if somehow your primary disk 0 (W7) could have been changed to a logical disk?

This causes me to think so:

If you look for a disk which is categorized logical in the My Computer equivalent of Windows 7, it will see the drive, but W7 will report any logical partitions as 0 space. I assume this could be true with Vista also. Maybe DISKPART is configured the same way as W7 (and Vista?) when it comes to this.

EaseUs Partition Master Free is the only program I know of that will give you the ability to see if the disk is being categorized as logical or primary AND give you the ability to change the designation. Since a disk must be a primary disk to be fully seen by Windows and usable, even as a backup disk or in your case Slave Master, maybe this is worth looking into...

If you install EaseUs on your Vista drive, you will be able to see how the disk is categorized. If it's logical, just right click on the drive and select properties and change the dropdown from logical to primary. Then your disk should work.

If it's not this, I'm not sure what it could be. Obviously, you haven't changed the type of the disk you are using, but I am just curious if it could have accidently happened along the way. I've seen this before being a problem with an OS partition...

Just to clarify, the logical designation is what is given to dvd drives and to standard hard drives used for a dvr (digital video recorder). If a disk is categorized as logical, read and write functions to the disk are not natively supported in Windows without some intervening software (like a driver in the example of a dvd read/write). In the case of a standard hard drive, it's not possible to read or write to a logical disk without changing the designation from logical to primary.

EaseUS Partition Master Free:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/easeus_partition_master_home_edition.html

Hope this helps

 

Sorry AltBo but you are misunderstanding disk layouts in Windows. An MBR disk can have a total of four primary partitions, or three primaries and an extended logical partition. The extended logical partition can itself be sub-divided into further logical disks if required, and all of these partitions are directly addressable by Windows without the need for any additional software provided you assign a drive letter to each partition. Windows Disk Management tells you what type of partition each is, again no need for extra software. Windows can only be installed to a primary partition when using the Microsoft MBR though with some other boot managers it can be installed to a logical partition.

@cracktus - best initial advice I can offer is to boot the computer to a linux live CD to see if the disk can be seen and read from that. Puppy is ideal for this sort of operation - just burn a Puppy ISO to a CD and boot to it. Ask away if you need further info.

 

Thanks for the suggestion.

To clarify: My PM is (was?) running Windows 7, and is the problematic one. My SM has the original Windows Vista my PC came with. This was done about 2 years ago and I haven't physically touched either drives or their connections since.

My BIOS was set to boot to my PM hard drive only. When the issue started, I changed the boot sequence to include my SM hard drive (placed after my PM hard drive in the boot order) to boot my Vista.

My Vista's "My Computer" doesn't see my PM hard drive at all. My BIOS detects it just fine (although doesn't want to boot on it) and, as mentioned previously, so does my Vista's DISKPART (although it doesn't see any partition on it).

What I originally thought was a Windows 7 software issue is looking more and more like a failing hard drive issue. Reformating the drive is out of the question at the moment, as I desperately need to get some of the data back.

All points to a damaged partition. I'm currently running MiniTool Partition Wizard. It sees my PM hard drive, although it doesn't see the partition. From the main menu, it marks it as Bad Disk (ouch?), while from the QuickScan menu it's marking it as Unallocated. I'm running that QuickScan tool, meant to repair lost or damaged partitions, as we speak. Of course, "quick" is a relative term: it takes about 7 seconds to scan 128 sector...out of 976,000,000 (it's a 500GB drive). It may take a while.

If MiniTool Partition Wizard isn't conclusive, do you think EaseUs Partition Master will help?

I'm not very Linux-savvy, but I'd definitively like to give this a try. Can you point me to where I could get hold of a Puppy ISO? A link you could give me, perhaps?

If I approach the problem from a different angle and assume that the partition really just "crashed" for some reason during reboot. Any suggestion on how I can fix/repair the partition, or any other method that would allow me to recover the data on the hard drive? Even if it's a temporary life-support fix for the drive, I just need enough time with it to copy/paste the desired files from that disk to another.

Any suggestion is welcomed!

 

I'm a bit of a fan of Partition Wizard and would try its partition recovery feature. That has worked for me in the past.

You can download a Puppy ISO HERE, doesn't matter greatly which one. You don't need to understand Linux as it has a graphical interface. Your drives will be shown at the bottom of the desktop and your first hard disk, Win 7, will be named sda1. You can explore and copy and paste just as in Windows. Hope it works for you.

BTW, not a great idea to have two Windows drives connected at the same time unless in dual boot configuration. I would disconnect Vista for the time being.

 

Considering the fact that neither DISKPART nor Partition Wizard can see the disk's partition, do you think Linux will have additional luck at reading the disk's content? Or will this solution only work if I manage to fix the partition (with Partition Wizard or otherwise)?

Any other data recovery tool or software one could suggest to retrieve files from a damaged partition or failing hard drive (which I'm inclined to believe is the case)?

At the moment, Vista is the only way I have to run my PC, and Partition Wizard. So I'm kinda stuck this way for now.

 

You should be running Partition Wizard from its bootable CD, not from Vista. If you don't have one it's high time to make or download one. You are actually fortunate that Win 7 isn't visible to the system, otherwise interaction with Vista would likely cripple both.

So disconnect Vista and run PW's partition recovery first. If that is successful you can boot 7 and recover your files. If it isn't successful Puppy is worth a try but it's a long shot. Can't see there are many other options if Puppy can't see it either.

How come you have no backups of your files? That's walking a tightrope with no safety line.

 

I'm about to try that. scanning my PM from my SM's Vista was going no where anyway: after three hours, it barely got to 0.02%. Yes, not 2%, but 0.02% (150k sectors scanned out of 976M sectors total). So at this rate I don't care restarting from scratch from a disk. Just downloaded MiniTool's Bootable CD and burned the image to a disk.

I know, I know, I should know better. :-o

All this talk of Partition Wizard got me searching the forums through a different angle and I came across this other thread: Can't Access External Hard Drive. It sounds like a completely different issue, but Partition Wizard gave him similar results to the ones I got so far. I can assume my PM hard drive's issue is similar to his external hard drive's. Thus, if MiniTool's Partition Wizard Bootable CD doesn't fix the partition, I'll do like this thread suggested and give MiniTool's Power Data Recovery a try.

Recovering my data is pricelist. For eveything else, there's Mastercard.

 

That's a good find, well done! sach2 was a great source of info on boot setups and partitioning but no longer posts here unfortunately. Hope you have some success, and do let us know the outcome.

 

Well, Partition Wizard Bootable CD has been scanning my hard drive for the past 6 hours and is just above 3.5% done. The Bootable CD is still scanning about 8 time faster than it was from my Vista SM hard drive, but it'll nevertheless take an additional 6 days or so (at 24h/day) to complete. When this ordeal is over with, I'm getting an SSD.

Anyhow, I will get back to you next week to tell you if it worked.

 

As you only have the one partition I would have expected it either to find it straight away or not at all. I'd be tempted to cancel that and give Power Data Recovery a shot at it.

 

Well, so far, what I'm doing corresponds to MiniTool's explanation of how the recovery works as per their site here (see third screenshot for the step I currently am at).

According to that step-by-step explanation, I have to complete the scan of the desired partitions, from first to last sector (in my case it's one partition encompassing Sector 0 to 976,000,000ish, aka the entire drive). Once the scan is complete, I'll be able to click on the checkbox of the partition(s) I wish to recover (which remain grayed out until scan is complete), and then I'll be able to click "Finish" for it to rebuild the partition table of the selected partition(s). Am I doing it wrong?

The issue I appear to be having with MiniTool's Partition Wizard Partition Recovery, is the ridiculously slow scanning speed. Based on the current rate of non-stop scanning of the past 22 hours, it will take a total of over 6 days to completely scan the 466GB partition. 6 days. In QuickScan Mode. Is this kind of speed normal? What kind of speed, for a given partition size, have your experienced when using Partition Wizard?

I consider MiniTool's Power Data Recovery a fall back plan to get my important (and not backup up :banghead) files back. But I'd much rather to just get my partition and Windows 7 up and running again until I get hold of a new hard drive. Furthermore, Power Data Recovery's free version is limited to 1GB of data recovery, and I have a lot more than that to get. So if I can avoid requiring to purchase the full version (I'm one of the few weirdos that don't torrent their way out of purchasing software), I'd like that.

 

OK, I have only once, just last week, needed to use partition recovery and it found my lost 75GB partition more or less instantly, so not really that well placed to answer your questions. However I rather suspect that PW is scanning abnormally slowly because of disk errors or some abnormality in the disk format. I can't be that optimistic that this scan is going to produce a result. Wish I could be a bit more positive.

 

The strange part is that there was no signs of imminent hard disk failure. The Tower didn't move nor was it struck in any way, Windows had been working normally with no file or software error of anykind, albeit FireFox was prompt to 2-3 seconds of lag and non-response every now and then. Actually, this all started after rebooting Windows (in a normal, hitting-the-Windows-Reboot-button way) to see if clearing cache and RAM would help the light lag my browser was experiencing.

I know this is the Software Thread, but are you familiar with Failing Hard Drive symptoms?

 

My 320GB Seagate eSATA failed just a couple of weeks ago with no warning whatsoever and caused system chaos from which I have only just recovered. That may not be typical but it's what happened here.

 

Way too slow, to me looks like a dying drive. Hard drives tend to die without notice and sometimes they don't give you a chance to make any backups.

3 weeks ago a friend had a very slow pc, I've made sure he had no malware or unnecessary software running at startup. I ran Crystal Disk Mark and set it to do a Sequential 100mb Read/Write test, the speed result was 3mb/sec, I ran HDTune (free edition) and started the benchmark, got same results. Luckily it gave me enough time to backup his 10gb of files that took over an hour since it ran on a crawl.

Just 2 days ago another friend told me her son's computer randomly freezes and is very slow so I gave it a look, Done same thing above with Crystal Disk Mark and HDTune, speed was less than 1mb/sec and this time I couldn't backup anything, it just died.

In both situations above the PC's had a secondary hard drive so it was easy to figure out the problem.

Unfortunately there ain't much you can do, If you can access the drive once again try to recover as much data as possible, I recommend Puppy Linux to do this.

 

Pleased you've posted that as I've been trying to get cracktus to try Puppy since post 3. But it doesn't sound too promising.

 

Unfortunately, it has been established that the problem lies with the partition having "broken down", from hard drive failure or otherwise. Puppy needs to have a valid partition, otherwise it can't read it, so this is not a viable solution. Yes, I have tried it anyway (knowing the partition was invalid), to no avail (it clealy said "Invalid Partition" upon loading Puppy).

Obviously, MiniTool's Partition Wizard Partition Recovery isn't going anywhere, so fixing the partition in order to copy/past the files is not going to work.

What I need is a data recovery software for damaged or lost partitions. MiniTool's Power Data Recovery is limited to 1GB of data, a lot less than I need, unless I pay for the full version which has no guarantee of success. Can anyone have suggest an alternative software for retrieving files off a lost partition. Perhaps a freeware, or a trial that would be limited by time rather than by data size?

 

You could try Minitool Power Data Recovery anyway. If it is able to recover some of your files you might decide it's worth paying for the full version. Otherwise it's a specialised data recovery service, and that would be costly.

 

I've tested this app but it's been a while and I don't remember which Live CD I used to access it but the documentation gives you a lot of choices. It's called TestDisk and it's 100% free and 100% functional.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/testdisk.html

Here's their description:

TestDisk is OpenSource software and is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL v2+).
TestDisk is powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.
TestDisk can

• Fix partition table, recover deleted partition
• Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup
• Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector
• Fix FAT tables
• Rebuild NTFS boot sector
• Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup
• Fix MFT using MFT mirror
• Locate ext2/ext3/ext4 Backup SuperBlock
• Undelete files from FAT, exFAT, NTFS and ext2 filesystem
• Copy files from deleted FAT, exFAT, NTFS and ext2/ext3/ext4 partitions.

TestDisk has features for both novices and experts. For those who know little or nothing about data recovery techniques, TestDisk can be used to collect detailed information about a non-booting drive which can then be sent to a tech for further analysis. Those more familiar with such procedures should find TestDisk a handy tool in performing onsite recovery.

 

Cracktus, So you don't have to ferret it out in the program docs, here's the page from where you can download the Live CD of your choice. Includes both WinPE and Linux based rescue environments.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Livecd