Not exactly coding related



  • Ok, so I have a weird problem that baffles me, maybe some of you can help.

     

    I have a 400GB harddrive. It is split into 3 different partitions, 1 holds WinXP, one holds Win 7, one holds my media files.

     

    I was in the process of moving over to Win 7, slowly mind you, so most of my day-to-day data is on the winXP partition.

     

    All of a sudden, the WinXP partition reads as unformatted to windows. Bios will boot off it up to the point that Windows takes control, then it bluescreens and resets. The Win 7 partition reports it as unformatted. Partition Magic installed on the Win 7 reads the partition correctly, says it's NTFS formatted, will resize it, but windows still reports it as unformatted. If I put it in another machine as an external drive it reports as unformatted but the other two partitions work as normal.

     

    I'm at a loss as to how to recover the contents of that partition. Any ideas?



  • Did you install PGP or another full-disk encryption software? That could explain it. Otherwise you may want to try Gpart and force an update of the partition table but that's a bit of a long shot.



  •  I didn't do anything to the drive except reboot. I don't have a linux installation handy to try gpart, but I have tried windows equivalents. The problem is that they all see the partition as perfectly normal with no errors. It is only windows that doesn't recognise the formatting.



    •  drive is borked. Check out SMART or run a scan.
    • An auto-update in any of the OS's changed the way it handles MBRs and didn't expect your special snowflake setup, thus borking it.


  •  Even more bizarre behaviour. I took it round to a friends' house and connected it via a usb external drive bay. Exactly the same behaviour. Two partitions work fine, the win XP one reports as unformatted. I take it round to a second friend's house and do the same, all three partitions work fine. I can grab all data off the supposedly borked partition so I do so. I take the drive back home, and now it all works fine. Will boot into win XP as if nothing had happened. The problem disappeared as suddenly as it appeared.



  • Friend 2's computer mounting the drive obviously did a thing that restored the earlier state of the drive.

    Let's see what happens after one or two reboots in your own machine!



  • @Malenfant said:

     Even more bizarre behaviour. I took it round to a friends' house and connected it via a usb external drive bay. Exactly the same behaviour. Two partitions work fine, the win XP one reports as unformatted. I take it round to a second friend's house and do the same, all three partitions work fine. I can grab all data off the supposedly borked partition so I do so. I take the drive back home, and now it all works fine. Will boot into win XP as if nothing had happened. The problem disappeared as suddenly as it appeared.

    You should check on them in 7 days to see if they have been murdered by a ghost.



  •  Well, I've rebooted several times now, used boththe win XP and the windows 7 partition to browse the internet and play games. Computer is behaving exactly as it was before this all started now, no problems at all. The problem arose mysteriously, stayed for about 24 hours (pretty much exactly I think, although I didn't actually note down times) and then disappeared just as mysteriously. I have no clue what caused it or what fixed it.



  • I think your problem is you don't have enough OSes on the same drive. Add 4-5 more. Once you get BeOS on there, it'll all work much smoother.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I think your problem is you don't have enough OSes on the same drive. Add 4-5 more. Once you get BeOS on there, it'll all work much smoother.

    Solution like this is what is getting rich country into more debts. If you have one credit card and can not pay bill, smart thing to do is not go for second one.



  • @Nagesh said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    I think your problem is you don't have enough OSes on the same drive. Add 4-5 more. Once you get BeOS on there, it'll all work much smoother.

    Solution like this is what is getting rich country into more debts. If you have one credit card and can not pay bill, smart thing to do is not go for second one.

    I disagree. Here is the "smart" thing:

    1. Buy lots and lots of cool stuff until the credit card is maxed out. Get lots of bonus points.
    2. Get a second credit card with a higher limit and use cash advance to pay the first one. Get lots of bonus points.
    3. Get a third credit card with an even higher limit and use it to buy Best Buy stuff that you sell at a discount to friends and family and use the cash to pay the second card. Get lots of bonus points.
    4. Pay some of the third card debt with a cash advance from the second card. Get lots of bonus points.
    5. Pay some of the second card debt with a cash advance from the first card. Get lots of bonus points.
    6. Repeat until the credit limit is too small to buy anything interesting.
    7. Use the bonus points to buy Christmas presents.
    8. Go bankrupt.


  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    @Nagesh said:
    @blakeyrat said:
    I think your problem is you don't have enough OSes on the same drive. Add 4-5 more. Once you get BeOS on there, it'll all work much smoother.

    Solution like this is what is getting rich country into more debts. If you have one credit card and can not pay bill, smart thing to do is not go for second one.

    I disagree. Here is the "smart" thing:

    1. Buy lots and lots of cool stuff until the credit card is maxed out. Get lots of bonus points.
    2. Get a second credit card with a higher limit and use cash advance to pay the first one. Get lots of bonus points.
    3. Get a third credit card with an even higher limit and use it to buy Best Buy stuff that you sell at a discount to friends and family and use the cash to pay the second card. Get lots of bonus points.
    4. Pay some of the third card debt with a cash advance from the second card. Get lots of bonus points.
    5. Pay some of the second card debt with a cash advance from the first card. Get lots of bonus points.
    6. Repeat until the credit limit is too small to buy anything interesting.
    7. Use the bonus points to buy Christmas presents.
    8. Go bankrupt.

    In India, big foreign banks are making use of strong local goondas to break your legs, if you declare bankruptcy.
    I value my legs and also what hang between them.
    So no go bankrupt for Nagesh.



  • Slightly old thread, but I have an idea what might have happened: NTFS partitions require a special boot sector that identifies them as NTFS partitions. If something randomly goes wrong with the drive and the sector becomes corrupt, Windows won't recognize it. The friend might have had some software on his computer (possibly installed by the OEM) that detects drives in this state and automatically corrects the deficiency.



  • @curtmack said:

    Slightly old thread, but I have an idea what might have happened: NTFS partitions require a special boot sector that identifies them as NTFS partitions. If something randomly goes wrong with the drive and the sector becomes corrupt, Windows won't recognize it. The friend might have had some software on his computer (possibly installed by the OEM) that detects drives in this state and automatically corrects the deficiency.

    Serial number on drive is causing problem. I once write similar software with C++. It work only on single drive because it read drive's serial number put by manufacturer.


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