RAW File System – 3755 days old

[Case]

I have a little problem here. I was playing a game on my XP sytem (NTFS) and the monitor blanked out and the computer rebooted. Upon startup, it hung on the DMI Pool Data screen. I tried several things to get past there, and then booted from the CD with the XP disk. I got as far as Repair, using the repair console, which just looks to me like DOS. I ran "chkdsk /p" and it found a lot of errors and fixed them.

I was then able to boot. At this point I probably should have tried to get my files off the computer (no, they weren't backed up ). Instead, I ran Norton Disk Doctor, which found no errors. I ran WinDoc, which found like 65 errors, and fixed them. Then I rebooted, and ended up in an endless loop of rebooting. I booted to the CD again, and went inot the reapir console, and ran "chkdsk /p" again. This time it said there were 2 unrecoverable errors on the disk.

When I exited, and tried to reboot, I got that endless rebooting loop again, and I also couldn't boot with the CD. I finally pulled the hard drive and put it as a slave on my wifes computer (running XP). It found it, but I can't access the NTFS partition on my drive. I can access the FAT32 partitions on the drive, but the NTFS partition properties says the disk has a RAW file system. Is this partition toast?

[Cool Canuck]

Did I ever tell ya, I hate NTFS?? And pray tell, what is Windoc??

I can't understand why you would not be able to boot to the CD. That has nothing to do with the drive. Sounds like that Windoc fubar things for you.

[Case]

Norton WinDoctor. Comes with SystemWorks.

I dunno what the hell happened. I pulled it off my wife's computer and put it back in mine. Now am able to boot to the CD. So here I am, booting to the CD. It does it's Windows setup thing. I get to the point where I can go into the Recovery Console by pressing "R". At the C:\ prompt I type "fixmbr" . It says:

"This computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot record." yada yada yada. "Are you sure you want to write a new MBR?"

Well, yeah, duh. So it writes it. I get the C:\ prompt again and type "fixboot" and it says:

"The target partition is C:."
"Are you sure...?" Well, yes. Then it says:

"The file system on the startup partition is unknown.
FIXBOOT is attempting to detect the filesystem type.

The boot sector is corrupt.
FIXBOOT is checking the filesystem type...
The partition is using the NTFS file system.

FIXBOOT is writing a new boot sector.

The new boot sector was successfully written."

At the C:\ prompt I type "exit" and it reboots. And I get a message that

"A disk read error occurred.
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart."

WTF?

[Grogan]

Yep, your NTFS filesystem blew up in your face.

Norton Windoctor may have hosed your registry, but itself shouldn't have caused filesystem corruption. When an operating system is in it's death throes though, it can scribble on disks. A kernel is supposed to halt before doing something like that, but who knows...

The "Raw" filesystem reported indicates that the partition tables or partition boot sector are damaged.

You should be able to boot the computer with the CD though, perhaps you meant that you could no longer start the recovery console. (Need to log on to an installation)

What you are to do next depends on whether or not there is important data on that NTFS partition. Data recovery software may be able to lift your directories off that partition.

While I was typing, I've been googling around and came up with this. The trial (unregistered) version will allow you to recover up to 4 directories. Note that I have not tried this, it just caught my eye because the trial version is somewhat functional and you can install it on the working Windows XP installation that the disk is installed in right now.

http://www.z-a-recovery.com/download.htm

Edit: Shit, you posted while I was typing.

The disk may also have physical errors on it.

[James]

Can you restore the Reg "last known"?

Does XP let you run "scan reg"?

Sorry Case,Ya know I'm a 98se guy,grasping at straws!

[Case]

Uh, James - Nope, Nope, Thanks! I gotta tell ya, this really sucks.

Grogan - yeah, I wanna recover some stuff. Thanks for the link to ZAR Data Recovery. I think I'll download that & give it a go. I'm at work right now, so won't be able to do anything till morning . . . .

Also, if it does have physical errors on it, I'm NEVER buying another Maxtor drive. This would be the second Maxtor I've had fail.

[TJM4FUN]

Case,
FWIW, I had a similar problem, ntfs c: partition and 2 others
on the same drive. Somehow a device drive install went awry,
and on reboot got a similar message. Partiton magic could see the partition, but could do nothing with it. since this is a corp
preload, I figured I lost it all. I d/l'd the 4 disk win2k boot set
from bootdisk, and tried the mbr fix, and then it said there was
now a c drive, but no directories. When I attempted to run chkdsk it said it was no longer supported, and to run autochk,
which I did, and it recovered EVERYTHING. supposedly this is
a frontend to chkdsk, but it didn't act the same in it's messages
and it did fix the partition.
Maybe it will help, maybe not. Since I didn;t have a cd to boot,
that was my only option.
REMEMBER: this was win2k! but ntfs is ntfs, if it recovers the
directories, you can always fix the mbr from the cd.

[Case]

I'll look at that Tim - it can't hurt to try it. Thanks!

[Case]

Well, I stopped by a computer shop I used to work at and they graciously offered to let me come in and use their Data Recovery Software. Cool. Also let me use their broadband connection to download those W2K boot disks, so I've just finished downloading every boot disk known to man and am fixin' to burn 'em to CD. Got 'em here BTW -

http://www.bootdisk.com/original.htm

and

http://www.drd.dyndns.org/index2.html

Wish me luck!

[Case]

Not good. Using OnTrack's EasyRecovery software. It sees the NTFS partiton, but after running it on the standard settings, it found exactly "0" files. Nada. Zilch. Zi . . . . you get the idea. This sucks. I'm running it on some advanced settings now, and it is slooooowww. Still determining block size. 25 gig partition, it had EVERYTHING on it for our whole network. I cannot believe I was stupid enough to do that. 4 computers, and I had everything in a shared folder on one. The one that crashed. I feel sick now . . . .

BTW, that program is here if anybody want to check it out . . .

[TJM4FUN]

Case,

Don;t beat urself up! we all goof from time to time.

One thing I should add to my saga of ntfs recovery is that I tried on of the recovery programs also, and all it would show me in a list of things it found is some directories like AAAAAAA,, and others
with strange names, and no files with any real names.

Forunately , in my case I didn;t let the recovery software alter the disk, I gave the autochk a chance and it did the trick.

Different situation, but if the recovery software doesn't find anything that is recognizable, think twice before letting it
recover garbage, and try something else!

[Case]

Hey, glad you posted back. I tried the boot disks, but it wouldn't even go into the repair console, got a system stop error. Tried the same thing with the XP disk, not a recognized command. When I quit typing this in, I'm going to format it and reload clean install.

I've already developed a plan to backup all the computers in a rotation to the next one on the network, and the next time I redo one, I'll back it up to at least 2 other computers on the network. Live and learn, eh?

Thanks all for the help

[TJM4FUN]

hmm, that's strange, the w2k bootdisks never went to more than
a command prompt. Looks like it may have been able to see enough to determine that is xp and not 2k.
Oh well, another lesson learned..

And a reminder to the rest of us!