Hi

I have used active boot disk to look at a dead hard drive.
It says "error reading sector 0 or boot sector is invalid". I dont now how to proceed.

* The drive behaves the same in two different computers
* It is a non-OS drive, just for storage
* When it is used, windows gets stuck at startup, when hard drive is removed windows loads perfectly fine. So I cant look in Disk management etc.
* The dead hard drive is visible in BIOS
* I have not done anything yet, such as fixmbr etc
* Knoppix finds the drive, but it only contains system volume information, all files are gone

Please help....

Hi,

Use an hex editor to open up your drive and check if you have access to other sectors other than sector 0.
If you have, sector 0 might be damaged and that's not a big issue.
If you don't, then probably your drive has any other problem that is outside DIY.

Hi

Can you recommend a hex editor for me?
It should be on a boot cd, since I cant get access to windows when this drive is attached.

If I can access other sectors, what would next step be?

Thanks

it might be LOCKED thats why cannot access it with Sector 0
try: WinHex, but useless if locked

_________________
Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

Winhex is a good option, but you got some free hex editors all over the internet.

Hi and thanks

I cant find winHex on a boot cd

Any tips?


Thanks

@hddnewbie:

If you are accepting the risks of you doing DIY and the fact that you might make the situation worse, then...

For this reason, using a Linux/Unix LiveCD to create a raw clone of the drive, would be my next step, if I was in your situation. I don't know if you have the skills / experience / confidence to do this.


No. That is only what you can see in the filesystem at the moment - you have not done enough work yet, to know what the actual contents of the disk are.

Many *nix LiveCDs have a hex editor included (e.g. hexedit / hexdump etc.) which you could use, if you wanted to follow some of the previous suggestions, instead of following my suggestion to clone the drive first.

IMHO it would also be helpful for you to give more info about the history of this disk, e.g. what happened just before the disk problem was first seen.

Download Hirens boot cd and run HxD from the minixp menu.

@Vulcan

Of course I can create a raw clone of the drive. Let me just google it first...

The history:
I used some boot cd to do some changes to my partitions (On a drive attached to the computer just as the bad drive we are talking about)
This tool (probably) scanned all drives and found some errors. I clicked yes to fix the errors.
After that windows never started up. Please note again, the bad drive is not the OS drive.
(Once this drive is connected, windows cant start up, when removed windows works as expected)

Stupid of me, yeah you could say that.....

What you are saying is that I should make an Image of the drive (using knoppix).
Then run some hex tool on the drive to make this boot sector ok.
If something goes wrong I restore everything with the Image.

Right?

@dick

Yeah, I will look at that


Thank you both

Hi again

I have given you the wrong information.
I ran knoppix again. I looks like this:

I opened the File Manager.
On the left side I see the name of the disk repeated 50-100 times.
The first time I click on each and every one of them I get "A job is pending on /dev/sbd/24".
The next time it works, and I see folder on the right side.
I have looked at ten of these "drives", they all seem to contain the same folders.
I cant see any files that are missing.

Im tempted to try to copy a file from one of these drives to an external hard drive.
But I will wait..............


So, still the hex strategy?


Thanks

You will be Googling for a long time, to understand all the relevant info IMHO. You can search my posting history here for the word clone or cloning - I gave a bunch of info to someone recently which may help you.

Cloning is easy (although still open to human error which can be catastrophic) when disks are fully readable; it's much less easy (and needs different software) when they are not. I use ddrescue, but don't ask for a tutorial on that.


Thanks, but more info would help on what exact errors were found, on the problem disk. Logical (filesystem) errors only? Were the physical disks (including the "problem disk") all fully read and no physical errors found? Without this level of detail, we can't be sure of correct diagnosis. This is why helping people via a web forum is difficult or impossible, due to the inability to get a full & correct diagnosis of a remote problem - at least within the time that people like me can spend on it.

I suspect you had latent problems on the problem disk, which were only reported during your changes which you mention above - but that since you weren't changing the "problem" disk partitions, the actual issue is not related to the partition changes you were making. That's my best guess, based on your info - without the disk in front of me, I could be wrong.


It depends on what happens during the cloning, but I expect that your problem is not only with sector 0, meaning that IMHO the answer to your question will probably be "no". This is why there is much more to this than just Googling - a Googled answer may be correct for that situation, and wrong for yours. Without sufficient skill & experience, it can be difficult or impossible to tell whether the Googled situation applies in your case or not. (Doctors suffer this problem all the time!)

You may find that you cannot make a perfect clone. You have choices about how and where to make that clone. Many suggestions depends on the answers or limiatations at each step. Your comments make me think you expect this to be simple - do X, run Y, otherwise Z. It could be much more complicated, with chances of human error or other problem at each stage.

Anyway, since the data isn't valuable, you can at least use this as a learning experience

Take Vulcan's advice and clone the drive before you fiddle with it anymore.

_________________
Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

Ok, I never thought this was going to be easy. But I hoped it would be easier than it looks right now

Before I look into this cloning thing, will there be a problem when the drive is splitted into 50-100 drives in the file manager?
Which one should I clone? They all look the same. What does it mean?

What will happen if I try to copy files to external hard drive? Or should I say, what could happen?
Oh, one more thing. I'm a windows user, so this hard drive is using NTFS.

Will it do If I can get my hands on some Acronis true image boot cd?
But maybe that won't work, since hardly anything works when this hd is attched.

Thanks

Never mind about how the drive looks in the file manager, if it's showing as 50 drives or 1,000 drives all it's proving is that there are some issues with it. The drive is still one physical drive, and you want to copy every sector from that one physical drive to a different physical drive. You don't want to clone partitions here, you want to clone physical drive A to physical drive B.

I've used a few Windows based cloning tools but I won't recommend one as it's been ages since I've had to use one. Perhaps someone else can recommend something. Personally I wouldn't use a Windows based cloner when dealing with a drive with issues, but that's me.



Avoid the temptation to try this first. Clone it first and then you can do what you like with the cloned image you have made, knowing that if you mess it up further you still have the original safely packed away.

_________________
Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

That's what usually people not working in DR think

After having your drive cloned, you can mess it up

Ok, so I tried Clonezilla.

This is what I get:
Partclone fail, please check /var/log/partclone.log
Checking the disk space
(standard_in) 1: syntax error
Something went wrong!!!
Press "Enter" to continue


Should I press enter?

Edit: The bad drive has the same size as the external drive I wanted to write the image file to.

That means you didn't do what I said about 3 hours ago, and read my previous posts on cloning. It's absolutely fine not to follow advice - it's your data, so you can choose what to do. But since you're not going to follow advice, I won't waste my valuable time giving any more!

Final hint: Read about cloning in my posting history - or just search other people's postings on this board about cloning.

Ok, you are right,
I searched the 5 first pages of your posts but could not find any tips about cloning.

I will listen to you
Thanks

sent you a pm, let me know if you got it

Hi

Yes I got your message, thanks

I have tried the knoppix cd again, and it seems that everything is as it was before. Not more corrupted, that is.....

I'm now running ubuntu rescue remix 11.04
fdisk -l shows:

Disk /dev/sda: 500 GB
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda5
Warning: Partition 5 does not end on cylinder boundary
Comment: This above is clearly the "dead" drive. Not sure why it seems to be 2 partitions?

Disk /dev/sdb: 159 GB
/dev/sdb1
Comment: This above should be the drive with working win xp on it


Disk /dev/sdc: 500 GB
/dev/sdc1
Warning: Unable to open /dev/sr0 read/write (Read-only file system). /dev/sr0 has been opened read-only.
Error: /dev/sr0: Unrecognized disk label
Comment: This above should be an empty external harddrive, where the image should go.
Not sure what the error message means.


Should I now run
ddrescue -dvfr-1 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdc1
or
ddrescue -dvfr-1 /dev/sda5 /dev/sdc1



Please assist. We are close now