C parition uknown

Hello,

I'm trying to recover/repair my machine's harddrive. It is a western digital, WD400. Machine is about 5 years old running xp professional. I need to recover data off this harddrive any way possible, but don't have that much money to consider taking it to a data recovery company.

-won't boot, fails when it tries to read the harddrive. doesn't get to the section where i can choose safemode, hence the drive is inaccessible.
-Using a windows XP cd, got into Recovery console, tried chkdsk with /r /p or no flags and it fails immediately with 'The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems'.
-tried dir command it fails with 'no enumeration' error.
-Ran fixboot and fixmbr but does not resolve the problem.
-Booted up with windows xp cd to do a xp repair, but i don't get the option because the c drive parition is marked as 'unknown'. So it does not even see the windows partition that i used to have.

-Tried running WD life diagnostic tool iso, it booted up from the cd but i just get a black screen with no options and no disk or cd activity.

Anyone can offer guidance into what might the problem be or anything else i can try?
much appreciated.

 

Are you sure it booted form the WD diag CD? You are sure you burnt the CD as an image not data?

Do you have another PC that you can slave the WD400 into to see if the partition is recognized/retrieve data?

 

Yes, i'm sure i burnt the WD tool iso as an image. I'm sure it booted from WD cd because otherwise it would have given me the disk error booting from harddrive. Also my boot sequence was set to CD drive first.

i don't have another computer, but i tried it on this machine:
had another harddrive(samsung) with xp on it. when i plugged it into my machine without the WD drive, it booted up fine.
But with the WD drive on the same bus, it didn't pick up sammy drive as a primary master or slave, and fails.

I put the jumper on the WD drive to slave, but still same results. I checked bios to hardcode the drives and samsung drive can only be placed in slave. weird why it doesn't boot up from it if it can't see a primary master.

Currently onto the WD drive has a jumper to slave, and sammy drive has no jumper on it to make it a master primary. I need more JUMPERS!

 

You can always borrow a jumper from an optical drive if you have an extra lying around.

I don't want to give you bad advice on partitioning. But just to figure out what is going on with your HD one option would be to try a bootable Partition Wizard disc.

In the original PC with the HD set as master, try booting from the PW disc. I wouldn't advise actually committing to any actions without some thought but you may be able to see if it can read your old partitions.

If you go to Partition Recovery (you may have to highlight Disk 0) to enable Partition Recovery. Then Choose Full Disk and Quick Scan. It should come up with a list of partitions on the disk in your case probably just C:. Don't actually recover it but check the status and try "Double-click to Explore". Do you get a list of your files? Just Cancel any operations and let us know.

 

Great idea, i'll steal some jumpers from the cd drives!:major

I'll try out what you said about the PW boot cd tonight and post back. Keeping my fingers crossed!
Thank you for your advice.

 

Just make sure if you are taking jumpers off optical drives in the PC you want to boot that you unplug the drives before trying to boot. An optical drive with no jumper may cause boot problems in and of itself which would just confuse things.

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I'm still not sure about the WD diagnostic disk...it should see that drive no matter what. Even if the partition table was messed up. At some point maybe try disconnecting the HD and see if you get anything when trying to boot the WD diagnostic disc. Some error like no Western Digital HD found.

 

I booted in partition wizard.
In the GUI, i can see disk1 partition, ntfs file system, but no drive label. I'm not sure if this is true, but it states that the all of the drive space is used up. Status is active, type primary. I tried exploring it but that did not work.

I noticed that there is a 'partition recovery wizard' option. Should i use that?

 

Yes, I think that is how you get to explore. Don't commit to the recovery just cancel after the scans and seeing if you can double click the partition to explore. Then post back.

 

I disconnected the drive and rebooted with WD life diag tool, it gave an error 'no drive found' error/status code: 0120.

 

Ok so the WD disk does boot but it is not reading the HD when connected. That is not good.

Let's see what you get with the recovery wizard. Did you only have one partition on the HD originally?

 

Yes, I only have one partition. scanning process 50% completed.

 

Scan completed. status is lost/deleted. Label is blank. It lists the starting and ending LBA. Exploring it by double-clicking only shows my computer>disk1 lba 63. I can't explore any further.

 

It doesn't look too good. That no program seems to be able to read the disk properly would seem to point to something mechanical wrong with the HD. It is a bit late for me tonight and no ideas are jumping out at me. I'll think about it and post back with any last ditch efforts that might come to mind.

Could you try and restate your steps below (I'd like to be certain it wasn't a jumper problem but I doubt it since the disk can't be read by other software when it is in the PC alone), I am still a bit confused on exactly what you tried here:

How did this start? You just went to boot one day and nothing happened? No errors or blue screen?

 

Hello,

Thanks again for taking the time to help me out.

Steps restated below:
1. Set the jumper on wd drive to slave setting.
2. connected samsung drive to the primary bus with WD drive. Ensured no jumpers were set.
3. Booted up computer. It failed as before.
4. Rebooted and checked bios to manually assign drives to primary and slave.
5. Could not set Samsung as primary, only slave

explanation:I was trying to make the samsung drive as primary so it boots from it, then i can run some utilities in windows to try and fix the WD drive.
But since I can't even access the drive from WD tool or Partition wizard tool, I think that would have failed as well.

I'll have to ask my sister about what happened exactly as she witnessed it. I think it was in stand by mode, but i'll verify and repost.

What do you think about using hitachi drive fitness tool?
http://majorgeeks.com/IBM_-_Hitachi_Drive_Fitness_Test_d2828.html

 

The Hitachi tool looks like it will work for drives from other manufacturer's so it couldn't hurt to try. I'm not sure it will repair errors on non IBM-Hitachi drives.

I agree, the prudent thing to do is try to get the WD hooked up as slave to a working system and see what Windows says about it. I think we do have a jumper problem on the Samsung drive. Different manufacturer's have different jumper settings--on the Samsung no jumper is slave. Which explains why it was only being recognized as slave by BIOS. If you have MS Word where you are then you can look at this document which you can download from the link. The red circled jumpers have no function so in the Slave setting the two jumpers are actually the same as no jumpers. So no jumpers equals slave setting on a Samsung drive. We need to set the Samsung as Master and see if it boots. Then try adding the WD as slave and see if it boots. http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/faqView.do?b2b_bbs_msg_id=105&orderNum=23

*****
Oh, I'm not worried about Partition Wizard right now. I'm not even sure there is a partition table problem. Just so you know it lists my Win7 boot partition as Lost/Deleted even though my system runs fine. I'm not familiar with that software I just wanted to see if it could read the disk and if it could show you the files on that drive. I don't know enough about it to tell you if the fact it couldn't show you the files is a truly bad thing or something recovering the partition would remedy. But that is for later, if at all.

 

You were right.. it was a jumper problem thats why the samsung wasn't being picked up as a primary master.
I got it working now as primary, D drive is the WD.
Looking at computer management, it shows wd drive as healthy(active) partition, 37GB, 100% free. Exploring it does not work, returns 'D:\ is not accessible the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable'.

Tried chkdsk d: with different options(/r /f /v /i /c), it fails and returns the following msg:
'type of file sys is NTFS. Unable to determine volume version and state. chkdsk aborted'.

 

Good!

Two things to try are a trial version of GetDataBack which is a very good recovery software, although very expensive. The trial will tell you if your WD drive is readable and how much data it can retrieve. I would suggest trying it to see what it can read. The filenames won't be recognizable but it will give some indication of what is still there. This will help determine if the "fixboot and fixmbr" from your original post may have damaged the partition table. [I hate those two commands because from my experience they seldom fix anything and can cause lots of trouble] I'm not saying they don't work at all but should be left to a last resort, in my opinion.

The second thing to try is WD Diagnostics for Windows to see if it can evaluate the HD. If it recognizes the drive try the short test then the extended test. If prompted don't allow it to fix errors during the long test just to be safe. I want to see if anything can read the drive before telling you to take any chances with your data.

 

i'm so pissed...:mad
installed getdataback and started a quickscan. It was stuck on 'loading MFT' think for an hour, and cpu stuck at 100%. I gave it some time because i didn't want to kill the app while its running and there was no stop or cancel button. Then all of a sudden, there was a power outage....twice in 2mins.
now the samsung drive is f**ked!! its making clicking noises. :mad so it can't boot. im screwed.

I'll have to get another drive before i can continue diagnosing the WD drive.
It wasn't making noise when i booted it. Or maybe put it in an enclosure and connect to my laptop with usb. What do you recommend?

Samsung drive is definitely gone. luckily no data on it, but it was my friends' drive so i'll have to make it up to him.

 

Got my WD drive into an enclosure.
Data recovery tool quick scan showed some files, seemed like system files. Nothing like folder structure that would look like in windows.
I started a scan selecting the 3rd option(something about file loss due to power/software/hardware). Im watching it scan and so far has recognized above 43000 files. Once this is done, i'll run a WD life diag tool.

 

I can actually see all my files now after the intensive scan by diagnostic tool!

 

It that in Windows with it attached to your laptop? Can you copy anything?

 

No, in windows explorer, it fails with 'D:\ is not accessible.The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.'. But in getdataback diagnostic tool after running 'systematic file system damage' type scan, it allowed me to see the folders and files under C:. I can double-click on photos and word docs to open, but can only copy the files if i purchase the full edition.

Ran WD diagnostic tool, the harddrive passed quick and extended tests.

I think this shows its a problem maybe with system files. what do you think?
Tried running chkdsk d:, it still fails with 'unable to determine volume version and state. chkdsk aborted'.

Sorry, you asked a couple of posts back how this happened. My sister put the machine in stand by mode and when she came back in 15mins, it was on the startup dos screen complaining that there is no drive accessible. I also know that the harddrive was near full and windows kept clearing temporary files to make more room. I wonder if that eventually corrupted a system file since there was no more room to write.

 

If GetDataBack can read your files then they are there to recover.

I just hate messing with the partition table because it can be so tricky and every problem is different. I would probably try the free PCInspector. It was often recommended and I believe if GDBack can see the files it will be able to also but will also let you copy them. I think it is worth the time to see what it can do and hopefully copy files over to the laptop before trying to correct the partition table on the WD drive.

The GUI isn't all that inuitive but you must run as administrator(right-click the PC inspector icon and select Run as Administrator) click the check mark for English and then in the next window to the left of the options there are icons to click. Try the third one. If it gives you a list of drives then highlight the one you want to copy files from and click the checkmark. Then look for the files you want to recover (hopefully organized in a standard Windows tree) and click the save icon and you should be prompted where to save.

It is difficult for me to pretest anything because all my partitions are seen correctly so let me know if you have any problems with the interface. Also the included help file isn't bad.

 

pc inspector doesn't seem to see anything in the drive. It recognizes the drive, but can't seem to show any data at all.

 

You ran it as Administrator? Do your logical drives show up? Namely C:

I initially ran it without Admin privledges and it didn't show anything.

If you close out the wizard and select Info from the top>then System info does it show anything.

 

Yes, Im running it as admin. System info shows that the drive is 0MB in size.
This time i clicked on first icon on the right(select drives). Clicked on physical drive, and selected 'Windows drive E'. Preview button did nothing, so I'm trying 'Find logical drives' now. Its scanning the WD drive now.
Results so far:
Drives found: 4
Directories found: 2
Files found: 0
Time left 32mins.

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Before running this tool, I tried another called diskdigger. Quick search didn't come up with anything, but deep search actually showed results, only disadvantage is file names are not recovered.

 

Cancelled PC inspector scan since file count wasn't going up. Now, I see 4 directories under drive e called 'NO NAME (lost) on windows drive E:'. There is one directory call 'DRIVE(without BootSec) on windows drive e:'.

Chose the first directory, i see folders under root folder. all of them are empty. But under root folder there are some files. all of them are with messed up names.

 

Something is obviously messed up with that drive. I'm sorry I am so cautious but I can't evaluate how important your data is to you.

I only used GetDataBack once about 4 years ago. It found files and then I used TestDisk to recover the partition. It worked but I can't say it will work for you. Since then I have never kept anything important on my boot partition.

At this point I'm really unsure what to do. My basic understanding of how data is stored is that each byte contains 2 pieces of information. One half is your data (say a letter) and the other half is the memory location of the next byte in the sequence. The OS has to know where to start reading your HD so it can find the file system. That is what a partition table does--it says start here and you can see a couple of partitions that contain a list of files. If the partition table is missing the OS can't find anything on the disk. I'm leaning towards trying to repair/rewrite the partition table since I don't see a whole lot of options.

I'll read up on TestDisk, it is command-line and not very intuitive. I haven't used it in quite a while so I'll have to see what it is capable of doing. I had been hoping some program I was more familiar with would provide better results.

I'll also take a look at diskdigger. It might be worth copying the files using that just to get them on another disk. It is looking like I will not find a more elegant solution.

 

Hi Sach,

I recovered all my images and documents using disk digger. Then I made my family go through all the pics and sort them back to how i had it originally on the harddisk. There is no point in repairing the partition since i have what i needed the most(although it would be nice experience ).
Also, since the harddrive passed extended tests, I think it is still reliable enough to use as a harddrive. I'll use it as a secondary drive just in case it fails again.

Moving forward, what do you recommend as a good set up on a new harddrive. two partitions, one as OS partition, followed by a second for personal data?
Once again, thank you very much for all the help.

 

I'm glad you copied your photos and documents. Good job on getting someone else to sort them out!

Since you are going to reformat letting Partition Wizard try to fix the partition couldn't hurt and might be useful to see if it could have repaired things. I think it is a one minute operation. And I just came across another tool that dlb (a regular poster who tries lots of software recommended for recovering data from damaged partitions). I haven't had need to test but you might want to give it a quick try to see how it does while you don't care about your data any longer. I hope you never have need of such software but if it works now you might remember it for the future.

On partitioning a new HD it really depends on the total size and how you use it. Basically, as a rule of thumb you want your OS partition half empty at all times. So for Xp the basic Windows files are 4gb. Program files are 2gb to start and whatever you add. I add Office (1gb) + Nero (1gb ridiculously large) + Mathematica (2gb) plus lots of tiny, small and regular size programs (1-2gb accumulates over a long period of time) = ~12gb. I could get away with 20gb for my OS partition (and have when using a 40 to 80gb HD) but 25gb is better just in case but still minimal.

Then I have a Data partition where I put everything I care about. The only thing that goes on my OS partition is things my browser mistakenly puts in My Pictures or My Documents and I periodically move these over to the data partition when I find them. If my OS partition failed today I could wipe it with no worries. I have my 3 big programs on CD and a document on my data drive with my registration keys for the other 5 purchased software programs. Everything else is free and I can download a current version and install whenever I need it. I got burned too many times when using win98 to trust anything on my OS partition.

You just have to learn to set your browser to download to the data partition rather than My Documents/Pictures where it goes by default. Usually in Options/Preferences. Then you have to make a point of saving any newly created documents to the data partition as well. I just create folders on my Data partition like "Notes", "Software", "Music" and "Images" etc. to keep things organized. In your case you definitely want to get in the habit of keeping family photos on the separate partition. Data partitions are less likely to suddenly disappear. Oh, and splurge and burn a fresh CD/DVD of your photos once a year whether you need it or not. At 50¢ each they are cheap insurance!

 

I tried using the tool mentioned by dlb. tried all the scans, unfortunately, it did not find anything. Partition wizard couldn't do much either. I gave up and just formatted it and created 2 partitions like you advised. Its up and running now with XP. I always used to wonder why pple would have multiple partitions...now i know. .
The advice you provided for organizing the data is very useful. Thanks Sach.

 

You're welcome! Good Luck!

It is sad that such a powerful tool as GetDataBack charges so much. The program works well but at $150.00 is just too expensive for the average user. Seems to me they are limiting themselves to only business users or people trying to save wedding pictures or other irreplaceable data. $50 or even $70 would be so much more reasonable for a program you're only going to use once. Oh, well.

Thanks for the feedback on Partition Wizard and Find and Mount.

 

Just wanted to say I thoroughly enjoyed reading this thread, guys...it's nice to find a couple of pros with no pretenses - keep up the good work!