I have a 250 Gb Fujitsu (MHY2250B) laptop drive. It would not boot in the laptop, so I removed it and connected it to my Windows 7 desktop.

Here is what disc management shows about the drive:

Basic 232.88 GB online

- (No drive letter)

9.39 GB
Healthy (Recovery Partition)

- (E:)

223.49 GB RAW
Healthy (Active, Primary Patition)

When I right click on the "Recovery Partition" it shows me no actions.

When I right click on the "Active, Primary Patition" it shows me all the normal disc actions.

If I click explore it says "You need to format the drive before you can use it"

Get Error:

E:\ is not accessible.

Data error (cyclic redundancy check).

What I would like to know is:

1. Why is the file system "RAW" (I don't even know what RAW is)?

2. Can I save the Data (just want the 'Recovery Partition'), just the drive or niether?

3. What steps should I take?

Thank You
Rob

In your case now the drive is on your system try and use either R Studio or Get Data Back for NTSF to see if you can read your file system.

First I would suggest that you clone this drive to another one.

About the recovery partition this one is from the factory and used to restore you system back to factory default like when you first purchased it. Some drives if you mess around with this one too much can not boot your system again. I would leave this one alone for now.

clone your drive and work from clone using either of the two mentioned programs and get your data back from your drive. Save it to another drive.

If the drive has no other major problems in it then you can reinstall it back in your laptop and try to run the recovery portion of your disk and restore your system. Saves a lot of time in downloading drivers to do it other wise.

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Iorana Haraharaini

I agree. First step would be to clone the drive and make a scan to it later.

Microsoft refers to a file system as RAW whenever it cannot identify the file system type. The OS then treats the drive as just a bunch of sectors.

If the file system has been damaged to the extent that it is seen as RAW, then the first structures to examine are the partition table and boot sector. If these are consistent, then one would suspect that the MFT has been corrupted. This assumes that the damage is purely logical. Instead it could be that there are bad sectors in critical file system areas.

If all you need is the Recovery Partition, then clone it to an image file for backup purposes, taking care to include LBA 0. Then reformat the E: partition. A 9GB image may just fit on a DL DVD, or you could split it across two single layer DVDs.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks very much for the reply's, while I was scanning with R-Studio the program locked and the drive began a loud clicking noise like a bit of metal was floating around in it, so it has gone to meet its maker.

Anyway before using R-Studio I ran a program called Testdisk-6.12-WIP and was able to create an image.dd file of the Restoration Partitian but I do not know how to use such a file.

When I get a new drive, I was hoping since I have a full installation disk of Vista (not the Sony one for the laptop) I could use that then enter the laptops Vista key code which I have. Could I do this?

Thanks Again
Rob

You can open the DD file within a recovery application like r-studio and scan the file as if it was an hard drive.
If everything went right in the image of course

If all you got was the restration partition on this one then you are out of luck. I suggested to you before doing anything to clone this drive. That was the first thing to do on it. Never play around with a failing drive. Now sounds like you have killed your heads on this one. Bad advise will destroy your data. It is number one rule to clone a drive before accepting any other advise. Always work from your clone. Like I said if you mess this one up then you still have your data on the disk and try again.

Sorry to hear this one but now you will need a DR center to change out your heads if you want back this data. Some people here on the forum think it is fine to start to play around in Microsoft to read files and print their findiing here on the forum. They do not care becasue it is not their data on this drive.



I am sory but advise like this on a failing drive even if it has logic problems is very bad advice this can cost you your data and in your case it has. Working with a failing drive has a lot of problems and it is not a good practice. I hope next time this will not happen and if it does you will clone your drive before doing anything else to it.

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Iorana Haraharaini

Ann, please read the thread again.

The OP asked, "can I save the Data (just want the 'Recovery Partition'), just the drive or niether?"

He went on to say that "before using R-Studio I ran a program called Testdisk-6.12-WIP and was able to create an image.dd file of the Restoration Partitian".

ISTM that he has recovered everything he needs.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Restoration Partition is the factory restore Partition on the HDD. This is a hidden partition created by the factory so he can restore his system back to factory setting. Noramlly it is very small and ususally it is FAT32 not the NTSF partition that his data sits on.

Yes Franc he got it all back when he wants to rebuild his computer back to factory standards and default. As for his data he lost it. I am sorry but Restoration Partition will not get him back his data.

I am sorry to say but he does have the Sony install disk on a .dd image file. That is what the restoration partition is on these disks.

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Iorana Haraharaini

Hi Iorana, my personal data is safe as I backup every day to my desktop, a USB drive and weekly to DVD's. All I really wanted was to try and save the restoration partition.

This is what the image.dd file looks like in GetDataBack



What do you think recoverable? If so are there any freeware programs that could restore this image? Reason I ask is I would rather pay $100 to upgrade to Windows 7 rather than pay $80 for GetDataBack.

Or even better as I asked above can I use another Vista disc and just use the laptops Vista key?

Hi, Going by whats shown in the recovery tree you could create a 10gb partition on the new replacement drive and copy the files in the restore partition accross. You do need to know if the recovery partition is at the begining or at the end of the drive! So you would create the partition accordingly. You could use the free partition wizzard software on the current Hirens disk to do this. You might be even be able to open the image and copy it accross with free software or even with Dmde or just use DD.
After booting from a Vista dvd, see if you can select the factory reinstall from the repair menu. If not you might be able to boot from the recovery partition by setting it as active (boot flag on).

Yes you can and it might be the easiest method!

Depending on you system it is either F10 or ALT+F10 to enter to the restore partition on this system. Dick is right on this one. I think this restore partition on this system is at the beginning of the drive. So you can do as Dick has suggested and use one of these programs and create it again.

One thing I do find out here if you use the origianl Vista CD and try to use the Vista code on the bottom of your system a lot of time it will not work at all. Normally the codes on the PC are for the factory. But what you can do in this case is this one. Use your Vista CD and reinstall the system with out a code. This gives you 30 days to install a code and to activate it for you.

Once you have the laptop working again and all drivers back in place connect to the Internet and Windows and then you can go online and use the code on the bottom of your computer to active it again on line.

Hope this one helps you out. Good luck

Do not worry about the configuration you are seeing this one is normal. This is a factory install restore partition and it looks like it is good. So you have two choices on this one. One move this to a new drive and use a copy or clone program to put it back on there. Then use F10 or ALT+F10 depending on the system and it will start the restore on this system. It should remain as a FAT32 on it and also should remain hidden as from the factory for it to work right for you in restoring your system back to factory default. Good luck

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Iorana Haraharaini

Thanks very much for the help Guru's.

Iorana Haraharaini said:
"Once you have the laptop working again and all drivers back in place connect to the Internet and Windows and then you can go online and use the code on the bottom of your computer to active it again on line."

Thats it settled, will start fresh using my other Vista disc and the key code from the laptop. (If it ever stops fricking snowing so I can go into town and buy a drive)

You know I am kind of glad this drive failed the way it did, as it has shown me that there is some great software out there which will help you recover files in almost any circumstance (deleted, formated, deleted partions ect...).

I may still play around with this restoration image.dd, just to see if I can extract the files from it. I will search around for some free "point and click software", as command line stuff like DD for windows makes my eye's gloss over and the mind wonder(funny because when I first started with computers over 25 years ago I did everything in DOS). I envy you Guru's who can type commands in your heads.

Once again thanks
Rob