Re: Corrupted NTFS needs reformat - how to preserve windows installation

On Aug 22, 10:23 pm, John John <audetw...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Martin T. wrote:
On Aug 22, 7:41 pm, John John <audetw...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Martin T. wrote:

John John wrote:

Martin T. wrote:

(snipped)

Martin T. wrote:

Hello.

I can access the broken partition from Linux alright.

I have not tried fixboot yet, ...
Will fixboot mess up the Grub Linux boot loader (I think that resides
in the MBR, so I'd figure not) ??

Your description sounds good:
So I would:
1.) Do a recursive copy backup of NTFS-C: to my external Harddisk
2.) Reformat NTFS-C: so that it gets a clean filesystem
3.) Do a recursive copy back from my external drive to NTFS-C:
4.) Run the recovery console and do a 'fixboot'

Is this OK?

It's just one more copy, but I do not have another disk so that will
have to do.

Thanks!

To dislodge the GRUB loader you would use the fixmbr command, if
fixboot damages GRUB then you will have to repair it, shouldn't be too
big a problem to fix if the disk is otherwise sound, search the net
and you will quickly find how to do that. I don't know how your disks
are arranged and where GRUB is being started, that is for you to
determine.

As for the trying to salvage the Windows installation that is how I
would try if nothing else works, which seems to be where you're at
now. Strange that Linux can read the files on the disk but that
Windows cannot see them or even chkdsk the drive, go figure! But it
seems that I have read posts with similar happenings before.

I want to *emphasize* that there is no guarantee that this will work!
There is no saying what kind of corruption the disk is having and if
all the files are recoverable, maybe there are certain areas or
sectors of the disk where system files reside that are corrupt beyond
repair or recovery. After you do this copy over job you may still
need to to a repair install. Before you try to copy files back to the
disk it would be a good idea to run a disk diagnostic utility from the
hard drive manufacturer to make sure that the disk is sound.

Also, I don't have extensive experience with Linux and I am not sure
that you will be able to copy files to an NTFS disk without the
Paragon driver or without another similar driver. If you cannot copy
to NTFS you may be able to copy to FAT32 and convert the file system
after the mess is fixed, if it is fixable to start with!

Good luck,

John

Thanks! You've been very helpful.

I'm aware that the data on the C: windows partition might be partially
unaccessible, and I'll maybe end up doing a reinstall anyway.
Grub shouldn't be too much of a problem I guess.

FYI: I use the ntfs-3g driver under linux for write access. It will have
to be seen if I succeed in copying really everything on the C: drive.

Thanks again!

You're welcome. Keep us posted, it would be interesting and informative
to see how well (or not) things turn out. As for copying the files back
and forth to NTFS there is also the matter of NTFS permissions which may
or may not be affected, once again it depends on the level of corruption
on the disk and the file system of the intermediate location to where
you copy the files to. An In-Place upgrade (repair install) should
reapply the default NTFS permissions, or they can be reapplied using
Secedit and the proper security.inf file. Nothing to worry about for
the time being but something that you might need to do... depending on
how things turn out.

John

Weeeeell.
I really messed up. Since I haven't got my external drive around atm I
thought I'd give it a try and run run fixboot anyway to se what it
does.
And what it bloody did was corrupt (or delete or whatever) the
PARTITION TABLE of my harddisk.
When I ran "fixboot C:" it put out some messages and then appeared to
change the drive type of the partition to FAT (!). Although this drive
has never seen a fat part.
Before running fixboot I had a disk with 100GB of accessible data and
a running linux partition on. (there were 3 part. on disk, C: NTFS, D:
NTFS and one ext3 linux partition)
NOW, there's nothing. *cry*
When I boot from my PartitinMagic floppy I get a big fat yellow blob
for my harddisk saying "partition table corrupted".

When I boot from my linux CD and run fdisk, I get: Device contains
neither a valid DOS partition table, nor SUN, SGI or OSF disklabel ...

So kids, don't be as silly as me and try this at home with a complete
physical backup of all data.

Well ... maybe I can get my data back somehow ... should still be on
there, shouldnt it ... Bah!

I'll keep you posted, this promises to get really thrilling.

Oh my, I thought you were doing this from two separate and different
hard disks! Definitely not something to do to try to recover data from
a corrupt partition from another operating system on the same disk, or
without backing up data that is stored on other partitions on the same
disk! If the utilities that you used to prepare the disk cannot recover
the partition table, or unless you had backed up the MBR, you may have
to try recovery software.

John


On Aug 22, 9:54 pm, "Martin T." <bilbothebagginsb...@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Aug 22, 7:41 pm, John John <audetw...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



Martin T. wrote:
John John wrote:

Martin T. wrote:

(snipped)

Martin T. wrote:

Hello.

I can access the broken partition from Linux alright.

I have not tried fixboot yet, ...
Will fixboot mess up the Grub Linux boot loader (I think that resides
in the MBR, so I'd figure not) ??

Your description sounds good:
So I would:
1.) Do a recursive copy backup of NTFS-C: to my external Harddisk
2.) Reformat NTFS-C: so that it gets a clean filesystem
3.) Do a recursive copy back from my external drive to NTFS-C:
4.) Run the recovery console and do a 'fixboot'

Is this OK?

It's just one more copy, but I do not have another disk so that will
have to do.

Thanks!

To dislodge the GRUB loader you would use the fixmbr command, if
fixboot damages GRUB then you will have to repair it, shouldn't be too
big a problem to fix if the disk is otherwise sound, search the net
and you will quickly find how to do that. I don't know how your disks
are arranged and where GRUB is being started, that is for you to
determine.

As for the trying to salvage the Windows installation that is how I
would try if nothing else works, which seems to be where you're at
now. Strange that Linux can read the files on the disk but that
Windows cannot see them or even chkdsk the drive, go figure! But it
seems that I have read posts with similar happenings before.

I want to *emphasize* that there is no guarantee that this will work!
There is no saying what kind of corruption the disk is having and if
all the files are recoverable, maybe there are certain areas or
sectors of the disk where system files reside that are corrupt beyond
repair or recovery. After you do this copy over job you may still
need to to a repair install. Before you try to copy files back to the
disk it would be a good idea to run a disk diagnostic utility from the
hard drive manufacturer to make sure that the disk is sound.

Also, I don't have extensive experience with Linux and I am not sure
that you will be able to copy files to an NTFS disk without the
Paragon driver or without another similar driver. If you cannot copy
to NTFS you may be able to copy to FAT32 and convert the file system
after the mess is fixed, if it is fixable to start with!

Good luck,

John

Thanks! You've been very helpful.

I'm aware that the data on the C: windows partition might be partially
unaccessible, and I'll maybe end up doing a reinstall anyway.
Grub shouldn't be too much of a problem I guess.

FYI: I use the ntfs-3g driver under linux for write access. It will have
to be seen if I succeed in copying really everything on the C: drive.

Thanks again!

You're welcome. Keep us posted, it would be interesting and informative
to see how well (or not) things turn out. As for copying the files back
and forth to NTFS there is also the matter of NTFS permissions which may
or may not be affected, once again it depends on the level of corruption
on the disk and the file system of the intermediate location to where
you copy the files to. An In-Place upgrade (repair install) should
reapply the default NTFS permissions, or they can be reapplied using
Secedit and the proper security.inf file. Nothing to worry about for
the time being but something that you might need to do... depending on
how things turn out.

John

Weeeeell.
I really messed up. Since I haven't got my external drive around atm I
thought I'd give it a try and run run fixboot anyway to se what it
does.
And what it bloody did was corrupt (or delete or whatever) the
PARTITION TABLE of my harddisk.
When I ran "fixboot C:" it put out some messages and then appeared to
change the drive type of the partition to FAT (!). Although this drive
has never seen a fat part.
Before running fixboot I had a disk with 100GB of accessible data and
a running linux partition on. (there were 3 part. on disk, C: NTFS, D:
NTFS and one ext3 linux partition)
NOW, there's nothing. *cry*
When I boot from my PartitinMagic floppy I get a big fat yellow blob
for my harddisk saying "partition table corrupted".

When I boot from my linux CD and run fdisk, I get: Device contains
neither a valid DOS partition table, nor SUN, SGI or OSF disklabel ...

So kids, don't be as silly as me and try this at home with a complete
physical backup of all data.

Well ... maybe I can get my data back somehow ... should still be on
there, shouldnt it ... Bah!

I'll keep you posted, this promises to get really thrilling.

cheers,
Martin

(How I hate google groups, lets see how many times this post ends up.)

OK. Next update:
Found this utility TestDisk (http://www.cgsecurity.org/)
It's freeware and so I managed to copy it onto a boot floppy and try
my best. After manually telling it to use 255 cylinders instead of 240
(it actually told me to try so) it found all partitions and fixed up
the part.table.
After A Reboot the MBR was still messed up so I booted back into
TestDisk and let it write the MBR anew. Now I get to boot from the
primary partition once more. (Not that windows starts, but well.)
All that remains now is to get grub back on to see if Linux also
starts.

Phew. Seems I was half lucky. (Though I'd say I've not halfway
deserved it trying these stunts w/o backup.)

cheers,
Martin

.

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