I've had a crash - about to panic

[Derek Smith]

I have two internal HDDs, one, 120 gig, divided into two partitions, one the operating system and the second kept for images. The other drive, 160 gig, has a 65 gig partition for all things TVR Sprint and the rest I use for video editing.

Logged on when I got back from London tonight and I could not access the TVR partition. A fault box came up saying that the partition is not formatted. (Should be NTFS)

I have no problems accessing the data on the other partition on the disc.

I use W2000 pro and have done nothing to the computer recently apart from fitting a DVD recorder some weeks ago.

I back up my files every month (last on the 26th February!) onto an external 200 gig HDD but there's a month of data I'm missing.

On My Computer it now shows as Local Disc (G, in Partition Magic it shows as:
Disc 2, Partition G:, Type Unformatted, Size MB, 64,997.3, ued MB, 0.0, Unused, 64,997.3, Status, Active, Pri/log, Primary.

PM won't touch the partition as it is shown as unformatted.

Is there any way I can pull the data from the disc? The only thing I can thnk of is to take it to a computer shop and be patronised by someone who doesn't wash all that often.

I'm in a bit of a fix and would appreciate any help. I'm not completely ignorant when it comes to computers, I've built them for me and friends for some years.

[FrenchTVR]

Don't do anything, until you have a copy of OnTrack Easy Recovery Professional, email me.

[nubbin]

I had this recently - I lost all my photos and videos!!

But it all came back. I can't remember exactly what I did but it was using disc manager in XP - not much use for a W2k user

Anyway, jut making the point that it's all still there, you just need to sort out the NTFS.

[arcturus]

Have you tried 'chkdsk /f' from a command prompt?

[Don]

FrenchTVR said:

Don't do anything, until you have a copy of OnTrack Easy Recovery Professional, email me.

GOOD ADVICE! Don't do ANYTHING that might write to that partition - or even that hard drive until you have given a reputable a recovery program a try.

There are *loads* of them out there.

We recently lost a drive and recovered almost everything from it...so all is not lost.

Oh...and you should probably consider mirrored disks for your critical data. We've now gone down this route for our main servers - learned the hard way...

[tvrforever]

Don said:

Oh...and you should probably consider mirrored disks for your critical data. We've now gone down this route for our main servers - learned the hard way...

Are you saying you didn't mirror the server disks to start with??? (I lose about 40 HDs a month through failure so you get serious re protection) Raid 1+0 on all server root/boot disks and Raid 5 for all data (much better with a SAN and an XP12000 or DMX3000 for data but they are a little pricey...)

But back to home use - I'd recommend a cheap external drive (USB2, firewire or NAS) for auto scheduled daily backups. That way you can take the drive off-site when on hols etc or if the PC's PSU goes 'bang' it doesn't kill both drives etc...

[Derek Smith]

I do have an external HDD for backup and normally use it regularly. But I've been reorganising my system as I've got a laptop being delivered today. All the work I put in over the last week or so has been aimed at 'rationalising' and (stupid I know) I thought I'd back it up once I've seen that it's the way to go.

Thanks to everyone who has reassured me. I've downloaded a programme that allows me to check the corrupt disc and it reckons that all but 126k is there for easy retrieval.

I'll let you know how I get on. Seems strange, I've had no problems with HDDs since I first put one into an Amiga about 15 years ago. Last October I had a catastrophic failure, the actuator broke on one less than 8 months old, and now this.

I've alway changed HDDs after 2 years' use so it is not as if I've been unreasonable. A computer I built for my daughter some years ago, when a 666mhz processor was the cutting edge, is still going strong with the original HDD.

I used to like computers.

Thanks

Derek

[puggit]

tvrforever said:

Don said: Oh...and you should probably consider mirrored disks for your critical data. We've now gone down this route for our main servers - learned the hard way... Are you saying you didn't mirror the server disks to start with??? (I lose about 40 HDs a month through failure so you get serious re protection) Raid 1+0 on all server root/boot disks and Raid 5 for all data (much better with a SAN and an XP12000 or DMX3000 for data but they are a little pricey...) But back to home use - I'd recommend a cheap external drive (USB2, firewire or NAS) for auto scheduled daily backups. That way you can take the drive off-site when on hols etc or if the PC's PSU goes 'bang' it doesn't kill both drives etc...

You'd consider using an XP12000?

It's gotta be DMX3000 all the way!!

[LongQ]

Derek Smith said:

Thanks to everyone who has reassured me. I've downloaded a programme that allows me to check the corrupt disc and it reckons that all but 126k is there for easy retrieval.

Bet that's the bit with the index for the partition on it!

Back a few years (Win98 days) I lost the primary partition on my C drive. Nothing would bring it back. Couldn't boot. Even a mate, who knows all there is to know and some more, couldn't revive it.

As it happened I had a second drive ready to install. So we loaded windows on the new one and made it the primary and, lo, everything running and both logical partitions of the original drive were accessible.

Eventually I got a disk recovery program with a boot sector edit capability but, not really knowing which bit was wrong and with the machine working as well as I needed it to at the time, I didn't bother. Too much time already wasted on it.

It's still running today as it was then, basically now just a print server, somewhere to connect the scanner and a back up resource for a few things - mainly my daughter's school work.

[tvrforever]

puggit said:

You'd consider using an XP12000? It's gotta be DMX3000 all the way!!

LoL - Got XPs (512s & 1024s) at and DMXs (3000's, 2000s and 800s - and a bunch load of Symms), let alone the FAS systems

They all have their relative merits (especially the in-built LUN virtualisation in the XP) and uses, particularly if an app needs more than 60TB usable disk...

[Derek Smith]

tvrforever said:

LoL - Got XPs (512s & 1024s) at and DMXs (3000's, 2000s and 800s - and a bunch load of Symms), let alone the FAS systems They all have their relative merits (especially the in-built LUN virtualisation in the XP) and uses, particularly if an app needs more than 60TB usable disk...

Oh, I see. That makes it all so clear.

[tvrforever]

Derek Smith said:

Oh, I see. That makes it all so clear.

Sorry got a bit off topic!! (storage is my thang )

So have you managed to recover it yet? If so what worked and what didn't?

[puggit]

tvrforever said:

especially the in-built LUN virtualisation in the XP)

"HP" virtualisation =

>> Edited by puggit on Sunday 27th March 16:03