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New Re: Drive swapping problem
Hi Guys,
This is Silverlock's stepfather. Thanks, Silverlock; I'll take it over from here.
The helpful replies so far convinced me that it would be valuable for me to join.
I'll start by adding a bit more info about the drive. It's a 120 GB Western Digital, formatted and partitioned (5 volumes) in WXPpro SP1 about 6 months ago as NTFS, dynamic. It's a secondary drive with no boot sector that I used to store my documents.
When I took it out of the original machine and put it in a new one a week ago (WXPpro SP2 - actually media center 2005 with the necessary XP features), the BIOS setup saw it and identified it correctly as did Disk Manager, but it did not appear in My Computer or Explorer. Though recognized in disk manager -but with the yellow triangular error icon-, it was seen as foreign, dynamic and empty and when I tried to import foreign disks, I was informed that the disk had to be added to system configuration and when I clicked OK, never-the-less, an error message was created in Event Viewer stating that 'No valid disk belonging to the disk group was found'.
I was advised that the partition table was lost. If this is the case, then my first choice solution (so long I don't need to take out a second mortgage) is to somehow recover the partition table. If this is not possible, my second choice solution is to recover the files onto a DV or another HD, reformat the drive and put the files back. This sounds tedious and time consuming, but can probably be done with one of the applications one of you mentioned. I found one too that looks like it will recover and copy off the files, Easy Recovery Data Recovery by OnTrack. It goes for $200 and I found a site called InexpensiveSoft.com from which I can download it for $20.
Does anybody know about the legitimacy of InexpensiveSoft.com or about how I might recover the partition table from the HD?
New Random suggestion
Do you have another drive available of the same size?

It might make sense to make an exact binary copy of the drive, and try experimental things on the copy.

Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
New try to make a copy of what you have first
boot with knoppix and see if it can read the drive, then copy the info elsewhere before attempting a restoral.
thanx,
bill
"the reason people don't buy conspiracy theories is that they think conspiracy means everyone is on the same program. Thats not how it works. Everybody has a different program. They just all want the same guy dead. Socrates was a gadfly, but I bet he took time out to screw somebodies wife" Gus Vitelli

Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 49 years. meep
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
New Agree with Box, here's how
Download knoppix and burn to a CD.

[link|http://www.knoppix.org/|http://www.knoppix.org/]

Make sure you get the English version.

Buy a new disk the same size or LARGER than the oroginal disk.

Place both in a computer.

Make sure you deal with master / slave issues if they share a
bus with each other or with the bootable CD/DVD drive.

Boot via the knoppix CD.

You need to figure out which disk
is which from knoppix's perspective.

This is VERY important.


Assuming you have 2 IDE disks, the 1st one found as a primary
on the 1st IDE controller will be /dev/hda, and the 1st primary
on the 2nd controller SHOULD be /dev/hdc.
You must identify the 2 disks.


If you are not a 100% sure, you can figure it out by accessing
them.

Open SEVERAL terminal windows up.

In the 1st one, type:
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/null bs=32k

This will start to read the disk and throw away the data.
You probably will not know which disk, though, unless you
are really sensitive to the noise.

So, wait about 10 seconds, and type the SAME command
in the 2nd window.

This will trigger the same read, but since the disk head
is busy, it will force the head back to the beginning of the disk.
As each command is running, it will force the head to seek
back and forth. At this point you will KNOW which disk
is which. It will be chattering like crazy.

Do it for each /dev/hd{a,b,c,d,e,f} until you are sure which
one is which.

Then you want to copy the entire disk over.

If the source disk is /dev/hda and the destination disk is
/dev/hdc, type:

dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdc bs=32k


Which this command completes, the target disk is a mirror
image of the 1st disk.

Use this disk for any attempted recovery.

Repeat if the recovery effort fails.
New Awooga!
It's a Windows Dynamic Disk.

This means that it doesn't have a partition table as you and I know it, but rather a Microsoft Spesh Partition Table Thing. Attempts to recover this disk in this manner will fail, because /dev/hdXX aren't there.

Now, i did hear rumours some time ago about dynamic disk support in Linux, but I'm not aware of any mainstream distributions that support it out of the box.


Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
New My instructions don't care about partition table
They copy the ENTIRE disk.
New The second website is illegal.
Ophelia:~ peter$ host inexpensivesoft.com\ninexpensivesoft.com has address 81.176.78.54\nOphelia:~ peter$ whois 81.176.78.54\n\nOrgName:    RIPE Network Coordination Centre\nOrgID:      RIPE\nAddress:    P.O. Box 10096\nCity:       Amsterdam\nStateProv:\nPostalCode: 1001EB\nCountry:    NL\n\nReferralServer: whois://whois.ripe.net:43\n\nNetRange:   81.0.0.0 - 81.255.255.255\nCIDR:       81.0.0.0/8\nNetName:    81-RIPE\nNetHandle:  NET-81-0-0-0-1\nParent:\nNetType:    Allocated to RIPE NCC\nNameServer: NS-PRI.RIPE.NET\nNameServer: NS3.NIC.FR\nNameServer: SUNIC.SUNET.SE\nNameServer: NS-EXT.ISC.ORG\nNameServer: SEC1.APNIC.NET\nNameServer: SEC3.APNIC.NET\nNameServer: TINNIE.ARIN.NET\nComment:    These addresses have been further assigned to users in\nComment:    the RIPE NCC region. Contact information can be found in\nComment:    the RIPE database at [link|http://www.ripe.net/whois|http://www.ripe.net/whois]\nRegDate:\nUpdated:    2005-07-27\n\n# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2005-08-25 19:10\n# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.\n% This is the RIPE Whois query server #1.\n% The objects are in RPSL format.\n%\n% Note: the default output of the RIPE Whois server\n% is changed. Your tools may need to be adjusted. See\n% [link|http://www.ripe.net/db/news/abuse-proposal-20050331.html|http://www.ripe.net/...sal-20050331.html]\n% for more details.\n%\n% Rights restricted by copyright.\n% See [link|http://www.ripe.net/db/copyright.html|http://www.ripe.net/db/copyright.html]\n\n% Note: This output has been filtered.\n%       To receive output for a database update, use the "-B" flag.\n\n% Information related to '81.176.0.0 - 81.177.255.255'\n\ninetnum:      81.176.0.0 - 81.177.255.255\norg:          ORG-RA25-RIPE\nnetname:      RU-RTCOMM-20030115\ndescr:        RTComm.RU\ndescr:        PROVIDER Local Registry\ncountry:      RU\nadmin-c:      RT-RU\ntech-c:       RT-RU\nstatus:       ALLOCATED PA\nmnt-by:       RIPE-NCC-HM-MNT\nmnt-lower:    AS8342-MNT\nmnt-routes:   AS8342-MNT\nsource:       RIPE # Filtered\n\norganisation:   ORG-RA25-RIPE\norg-name:       RTComm.RU\norg-type:       LIR\naddress:        8/1, Olsufievsky pereulok\naddress:        121021\naddress:        Moscow\naddress:        Russian Federation\nphone:          +7 095 980 06 40\nfax-no:         +7 095 980 06 45\nadmin-c:        RRS6-RIPE\nadmin-c:        LUDA1-RIPE\nmnt-ref:        AS8342-MNT\nmnt-ref:        RIPE-NCC-HM-MNT\nmnt-by:         RIPE-NCC-HM-MNT\nsource:         RIPE # Filtered\n\nrole:           RTComm.RU Internet Center\naddress:        JSC RTComm.RU\naddress:        7, Boutlerova str.\naddress:        117485, Moscow\naddress:        Russia\nphone:          +7 095 980 0640\nfax-no:         +7 095 980 0645\nremarks:        trouble:      ---------------------------------------------------------\nremarks:        trouble:      RTComm.RU Internet Center is available 24 x 7\nremarks:        trouble:      ---------------------------------------------------------\nremarks:        trouble:      Points of contact for RTComm.RU Network Operations\nremarks:        trouble:      ---------------------------------------------------------\nremarks:        trouble:      SPAM and Network security issues:    abuse@rtcomm.ru\nremarks:        trouble:      Routing issues:                      noc@rtcomm.ru\nremarks:        trouble:      Peering requests:                    peering@rtcomm.ru\nremarks:        trouble:      Mail issues:                         postmaster@rt.ru\nremarks:        trouble:      News issues:                         newsmaster@rtcomm.ru\nremarks:        trouble:      ---------------------------------------------------------\nremarks:        trouble:\nremarks:        trouble:      ___________________A T T E N T I O N!____________________\nremarks:        trouble:\nremarks:        trouble:      Please use abuse@rtcomm.ru e-mail address for complaints.\nremarks:        trouble:      All messages to any other our address, relative to SPAM\nremarks:        trouble:      or security issues, will not be concerned.\nremarks:        trouble:\nremarks:        trouble:      ---------------------------------------------------------\nadmin-c:        RRS6-RIPE\ntech-c:         RUS-RIPE\ntech-c:         NDA-RIPE\ntech-c:         DDV55-RIPE\ntech-c:         FIL1-RIPE\ntech-c:         LUDA1-RIPE\nnic-hdl:        RT-RU\nmnt-by:         AS8342-MNT\nsource:         RIPE # Filtered\nabuse-mailbox:  abuse@rtcomm.ru\nabuse-mailbox:  abuse@rtcomm.ru\nabuse-mailbox:  abuse@rtcomm.ru\nabuse-mailbox:  abuse@rtcomm.ru\nabuse-mailbox:  abuse@rtcomm.ru\n\n% Information related to 'ORG-RA25-RIPE'\n\nroute:        81.176.0.0/15\ndescr:        RTCOMM-RU\norigin:       AS8342\nmnt-by:       AS8342-MNT\nsource:       RIPE # Filtered


Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
     Re: Drive swapping problem - (Chester) - (6)
         Random suggestion - (ben_tilly)
         try to make a copy of what you have first - (boxley)
         Agree with Box, here's how - (broomberg) - (2)
             Awooga! - (pwhysall) - (1)
                 My instructions don't care about partition table - (broomberg)
         The second website is illegal. - (pwhysall)

CFOC!
63 ms