Hi All,

I have corrupted hard disk, which is in working condition,I am kept for raw copying the Hard disk using Stellar Phoenix.

It has copied around 120GB of of 320GB hard disk,i need to partition the first 130GB of memory, my question is

1. How to Partition the first few sector or Block/cylinder?
2. Which tool to be used for the same.
3. Does the un partitiooned data will remain same(Remaining 200GB i want to be untouched in the process of partioning)?

As always, remember that any DIY (do it yourself) actions have risks- your actions might cause more problems or you might cause total, unrecoverable data loss. Think carefully how important this data is to you, before you do anything with this disk.


Based on your questions, you do not mean what experienced people would call "corrupted" - instead I expect that you mean "some parts of the disk are unreadable". If you want accurate replies from readers here, please supply all of your test results, not your interpretation of the test results. One example of the test results you should supply, is the full SMART data, including all attribute raw and normalised values.


That is a matter of opinion. If the drive was properly "working", then you would not be asking your questions below. Therefore since the drive does seem to have a problem, I hope you will not be doing anything to the drive without careful planning and consideration of the risks you are taking.


Due to the ambiguity of your comment, it is not clear if you have already recovered the data from this this disk, or if you plan to do that in the future.


I don't understand exactly what you mean, nor whether you plan to try to recover data from the remaining 200GB of the disk.


Why exactly do you want to do this?


Any standard partitioning tool will allow you to create a partition containing the first X cylinders.


You should not be doing any partitioning on this disk, which seems to have a problem, unless you have a backup of all the data which you need first. The remaining 200GB might be untouched, if you don't make any mistakes, but depending on the exact original situation, you may cause new problems by re-partitioning the disk. Therefore before you do anything, you need to explain much more about your situation, explain what you have done already, and explain why you are asking these questions, if you want to get the most accurate comments from the readers here. Trying to guess your plan from the questions you are asking, it seems that you would be taking big (and unnecessary) risks with your data.

Thank u very much vulcan for ur response...


I have FAT corrupted Hard Disk which is of 320GB.

I want to recover Important photos of my sweet memories from it.

I have taken raw image backup of 120GB from the starting sector till 120GB of the hard disk , and stopped copying remaining data, I want remaining 200GB
data to be recovered in the later date.

I need 120GB which I have already taken back up to be partitioned for NTFS file system, the partitioned hard disk for my laptop use.
Please tell me the tool for partition to keep my 200GB data untouched in the process of partition which i need to recover the data in the later date.

Your valuable response is very helpful in doing this.


Thanx to all readers and repliers.....

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately you have not supplied some of the important answers that I requested - especially your actual test results, and not your interpretation of them.


Perhaps this is correct, or perhaps this is not correct - this is your interpretation of the problem, and many times on this forum, we see users who have made the wrong interpretation of error messages, failure symptoms etc. and because of their mistake, their plans for the next steps were wrong.


That is a bad (i.e. high-risk, perhaps totally inappropriate) plan. Many possible events could cause you to lose that 200GB of data / photos, depending on what the real problem is. Therefore before I consider answering you question, you need to answer mine - please provide full, clear, and unambiguous answers:

Why did you not make a raw clone, or a raw image file, of the remaining 200GB of this drive already - what stopped you from doing that?

What utility did you use to make the raw image backup of the first 120GB? Where did you write that 120GB file?

What exactly are the symptoms / error messages / test results, which make you believe that you have "FAT corrupted Hard Disk", and not a different problem?

How is this drive partitioned at the moment? How many Windows drive letters, with what size and filesystem type (FAT / NTFS etc.) for each drive letter, exist already on that physical drive?

Thank u very much Vulcan...For ur patience and ur intrest in helping me....


Hard disk which was in my laptop, accidentally corrupted the OS,It was not booting up....
I removed the hard disk and connected to another laptop as a external hard disk, by using hard disk case...


I opened the connected drive and it shown some 'X' drive in the laptop and shown 100MB external device and free space of few KB....

Then I concluded its FAT corrupted...


It was NTFS partitioned hard disk in Windows 7 Home basic Genuine with my Vaio Laptop.

I used stellar phoenix software for retriving the Photos...I successfully recovered few GB of photos which are not that important...It took 4days for recovering
from around 100GB of the hard disk...Here I assume that it sequentially scanned the data from the start sector its 0...It was showing on the sccreen
saying sector number and of some x sectros left.



Then later I thought of creating Image of Hard disk, even it took 3days for just copuing 120GB ofhard disk raw data image....I bugged up and
stopped copying the Image, I used Stellar Phoenix Software.

HDD Imaging i was doing just to fasten the recovery process, I was copying to another External HDD which is in good condition which I borrowed from my friend
I need to give it back....

AS I was copied the and recoverd the Photos which is in the first 120GB of the HDD, so i wnated to partition the 120GB of HDD for my Laptop, to make it up and running,
later I can scan and recover the remaining 200GB data photos and save to other external HDD.

I hope I answered to all your questions.

I forgot to mention it had single partition(320GB) as c drive only....

Thanks for the info.


Actually no - e.g. the SMART data that I asked for earlier is still missing - but you have given enough answers that I can make some comments, with a reasonable confidence.


I don't believe that the drive "corrupted the OS" - the drive almost certainly has a fault, due to some of the symptoms which you mention later. That is why your laptop failed to boot.


It cannot have a corrupted FAT, if it was an NTFS partition / filesystem! This part of your story was very confusing because you mentioned both FAT and NTFS. Now it is clear that your descriptions about FAT are a mistake. I cannot give any analysis of what you saw as you would need to supply more detail, but from the later information, the problems with the filesystem information are likely a result of another underlying problem with the drive - this is not just a corrupt NTFS filesystem.


That tells you that there is a deeper problem with this drive. If the drive was behaving correctly, then the recovery of 100GB data would not take 4 days. Also note that it is generally not a good plan to try to recover files directly from a failing / problem drive - and the indirect evidence is that your drive does have a problem.


Same comment as above - there is some other, underlying, problem which is causing this "problem" drive to be so slow.


That did not translate well into English. I guess you mean that you stopped the process of creating a raw image file, after 120GB of the "problem" drive had been read. But perhaps you mean that a bug (or error? or something similar?) occurred?


No, you have misunderstood how DIY recovery should be done. Making an image file (or raw clone) of a "problem" drive is not just to make the recovery process faster - this is an important part of the process which reduces the risk of doing DIY recovery (remember what I said before - everything you are doing has risks, and you might destroy the drive totally because of what you are doing).


Either you need to keep that friend's drive for longer, or you need to buy or borrow another external drive, with enough space to hold a full image of the whole 320GB from your "problem" drive, if you are going to continue with your risky DIY recovery attempts. Personally I would not use Stellar Phoenix to create an image file - it runs on Windows and that often does not cope well with failing drives. DIY recovery attempts from failing drives are usually best done with non-Windows cloning (or image file creation) utilities, with control of retries and the ability to be restarted (but you should expect that the drive might fail catastrophically at any time, so everything is done at your risk). Search the previous posts on this forum for discussions about cloning. However based on your questions, I do not believe that you have the experience to perform this part of the process without big risks.


Oh - that is a crazy plan. Now that you have explained the "problem" drive has only 1 partition (drive C), and explained the other details above, you must not follow your plan to repartition this drive, before you have recovered your remaining 200GB of photos. Otherwise you will lose vital filesystem information which will be needed to help to recover those photos.

In summary: Your original plan is not sensible.

If the photos are not worth any money, and if you are therefore happy taking big risks that you might destroy them, then study, research and practice (using other unimportant drives) about how to make a raw clone (or make a raw image file) of the whole of the 320GB "problem" drive, using non-Windows utilities. Then assuming you are successful in doing that (which I doubt), you will need more unused disk space to hold any photos which can be recovered later from your clone (or image file). Only after you have decided that you have given-up trying to recover any more from the clone (or image file) of the "problem" drive, then you can re-partition it, or do any other writing to that "problem" drive, because you don't care about it any more.

However if the photos are worth any money to you, then you should carefully consider using a professional DR company, as it is clear from the slow copying from the "problem" drive there there is some kind of (not yet diagnosed) underlying problem - and you don't have the experience to reduce the risks of any DIY recovery attempt.

If you have any more questions, then you must supply the full SMART data from the "problem" drive (including raw attribute values), otherwise I might not spend any time replying - that information is required. One of the easiest Windows utilities that can gather that information, is HDDScan (but do not use it to scan that drive - just gather the SMART data). You can either save the SMART data as a file onto another drive, or you can take a Windows screendump, or you can take a photo of the screen. All of the SMART data must be visible. Hopefully the USB enclosure where you put the "problem" drive does support gathering SMART data (most do, but some older ones do not).

Good luck with whatever you choose to do - your data, your risk

Only after you have recovered(and verified) all your data from the drive, should you think of reusing the drive.

The abnormal time taken to clone 120gb of the drive suggests that the drive may be having some problems and may fail totally too.

If data is really important, its better to seek pro help before its too late.
Your priority should be to clone the drive(in full ) and recover data from the clone.

Buy another drive ( you can use it as a backup drive later), clone your drive , recover the data to another drive, verify if all the data is ok.
Then check the original drive with MHDD before reusing it.

Vulcan,

Thank u very much Vulcan for ur time and patience in answering my question....I will follow as u have suggested....

sathyan,


Thank u very much sathyan for ur time and patience in answering my question....I will follow as u have suggested....