Healthy, active, online, but not there?

[az]

Go to www.ontrack.com and download EasyRecvery trial edition, and look what it says.

AZ

[Marshmallowman]

umm....have you got windows to "sign" drive, windows won't do anything until it has a valid signature....

[mutz]

It appears as if I have slammed the door and forgotten the key. I'm willing to try anything that will SAFELY get me back in, but I want to explore all possibilities.

First I'd like to formulate an e-mail to MS Support. Can you check me out on this? I want to be sure it's clear.
----------------------------------------------

Subject: Unable to access NTFS partition.

----------------------------------------------

I am no longer able to access the volume on disk 0 after a clean XP installation on disk 1.

The new installation is on disk 1, a NTFS 120GB Raid 2 array.

The ex-D: drive from the previous XP installation is now disk 0, a NTFS 128GB IDE drive for backup and archiving. This drive contains 40GB of vital data.

On the previous XP installation I had moved the page file from C: to D: for performance reasons.

Before formatting C:, to make a new installation of XP, I did not remove the page file from D:.

The new installation of XP has no knowledge of the ex-D: as I disconnected the drive before the new XP installation to avoid XP installing on disk 0 or endangering its contents.

After reconnecting disk 0, the new XP installation does not assign a drive letter to it, nor recognize the partition on the ex-D:. This drive and its folders do not appear in any XP program or utility.

The physical drive appears properly in Device Manager and in Disk Manager with no drive letter. Open, Explore and Properties are not available for this volume. There is no apparent way to read the drive contents.

I assume Disk Manager uses the DISKPART ASSIGN LETTER command to assign drive letters. This command will not assign drive letters on a NTFS volume that contains a pagefile.

Though I can find no confirmation of this anywhere, it appears that on startup XP sees pagefile.sys on a partition that is neither a boot drive nor a system volume, and does not assign a drive letter nor mount that volume.

Whereas disk 0 is listed in Disk Manager as healthy, active and online, its partition is inaccessible.

How can I rescue this drive with no risk to its contents?



Does this state the case clearly? (Assuming this is the case.)

My brain is tired. Too little sleep and too much coffee.

[VJ]

I would say it does...
(still would keep the NTFSDOS option open; it is unlikely Microsoft will mention this, as the early NTFSDOS options were made using reverse engineering on the NTFS system ).


Jörg

[mutz]

@AZ Only the professional version of EasyRecovery for $500 will cover all the file types. I'd prefer to recover the volume to extracting 40GB of files, if possible.

@ Marsh Don't know about the signature. Will check that bridge if the others aren't the problem.

@ VJ Right on all points. Until I find out otherwise, I'm assuming that the DiskPart assign letter failure due to the orphan pagefile is the reason. Though I don't know yet what to do about it, I'm almost hoping it's simply that.

@ Taz Sorry it's so big, but otherwise you can't read it.

[VJ]

Originally posted by mutz
Until I find out otherwise, I'm assuming that the DiskPart assign letter failure due to the orphan pagefile is the reason. Though I don't know yet what to do about it, I'm almost hoping it's simply that.

It still seems like something strange to me: why would the presence of one file prevent the OS from assigning a driver letter. I would be suprised to even see that a drive is scanned for certain files when a driveletter is assigned. If an orphan pagefile were present, at best the OS should report this, and either open the pagefile settings dialog or simply ignore it.

Either way, I hope M$ can provide you with proper answers...


Jörg

[mutz]

This is my only clue:

assign

Assigns a drive letter or mount point to the volume with focus. If no drive letter or mount point is specified, then the next available drive letter is assigned. If the drive letter or mount point is already in use, an error is generated.

By using the assign command, you can change the drive letter associated with a removable drive.

You cannot assign drive letters to system volumes, boot volumes, or volumes that contain the paging file. In addition, you cannot assign a drive letter to an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) partition or any GUID Partition Table (GPT) partition other than a basic MSDATA partition.

What do you think?

[az]

Mutz, you could try asking your question either to dan at www.dansdata.com or to the c't hotline at http://www.heise.de/ct/faq/. The latter sometimes take over a week t answer, but I guess it's worth a try.

I'd also leave the drive disconnected to prevent accidental damage to your data until you have a solution.

AZ

[Zao]

When looking at your diskpart output, I notice that the partition type is listed as Unknown.

Compare to my output:

DISKPART> select disk 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Primary           3079 MB    32 KB
  Partition 2    Extended            72 GB  3079 MB
  Partition 3    Logical             10 GB  3079 MB
  Partition 4    Logical             56 GB    13 GB
  Partition 5    Logical           5995 MB    69 GB

DISKPART> select disk 1

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Primary            112 GB    32 KB

DISKPART> select disk 2

Disk 2 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Primary            149 GB    32 KB

DISKPART>

It looks to me that your partition descriptor might've gotten shafted somehow.
That would explain why it can't be assigned a drive letter, since Windows doesn't know how to access the volume in the partition.
The type of that Partition should be Primary.

[thop]

What i'd try is to boot linux (Knoppix on CD is the easiest solution here). It should mount the drive just fine as it doesn't care about any pagefiles.

[Zao]

I think that the problem is not about the stray pagefile that lies there.
As far as this new Windows install is concerned, that pagefile.sys is just a file like all others.

Also, Linux NTFS is only readonly, except for NT4 NTFS partitions.

[cjolley]

Have you tried Norton Utilities?
It fixed a corrupted partition on a failed IBM GXP of mine once.
In fact it was an striped array of two GXPs.

I just tested the drive with the graphical Disk Doctor.
It said I had a corrupted partition table, would I like it fixed?
Yes please.
Fixed.
Whole thing took about 1 minute.

Of course I lost about 1 year off of my life thinking about what MIGHT happen when I said yes.
chuck

[Zao]

Could you please perform these commands in diskpart and give us your output?

>select disk 0
>select partition 1
>detail disk
>detail partition

[mutz]

I have SystemWorks, but haven't seen NU for ages.

Here's DiskPart:

[cjolley]

Originally posted by mutz
I have SystemWorks, but haven't seen NU for ages.

Here's DiskPart:

I meant System Works.
Just used NU for old times sake.

What's a "Hidden" partition?

chuck