Re: Hard disk data recovery.


Grant wrote:
On 7 Feb 2006 16:12:57 -0800, b173@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

I have a problem. I was transferring files from a WinXP computer to a
hard drive that is installed on a Windows 2000 machine. When I came
back several hours later to monitor progress the operation had been
interupted. On the XP machine there was a message saying that the
destination no longer existed and lo and behold it wasn't lying.

You give no technical details, just what did you do?

I was transferring about 17GB of files in two streams to a shared 160GB
Hard drive (D drive or hdb) housed in a Windows 2000 machine. As you
can tell it's the second HD on this machine. The OS is on the first HD.
The machines were connected by a Linksys router.

I started the transfer, it all seemed to be going well, and so I left
it for a few (4 or 5?) hours. When I returned there were two messages
(one for each stream) that said the operation could not be completed as
the network location no longer existed. Sorry I don't have the actual
wording, but it was close to what I have written. I tried to log in to
the Windows 2000 computer from the XP one and The shared printer was
still visible, but not the previously shared (D) drive. So I physically
went to the Win 2000 machine and in Explorer the Drive was visible, but
gave no Properties (size). Upon trying to access the drive through
explorer Windows reported that the drive is not formatted.

I'm not sure what other details I can give. hope this is enough.


The Windows 2000 machine says that the drive is there, but it isn't
formatted. Now there's a lot of important stuff on that drive that
needs to be salvaged. I've tried rolling back the registry etc... blah.

You're screwed? Why? You did not immediately remove the drive from
Win2k access. Win2k silently does things to visible hard drives, not
the best way to attempt data recovery (or the original transfer).

So now I want a real solution.
To what? Just start over and do it properly.

The solution that I wanted was to recover the data that is on the (now)
unformatted disk. As far as "doing it properly" goes... I think I just
learned that lesson :)


the disk but it doesn't know what filesystem type it is. I think it
might be FAT32 but it could be NTFS.

Being so vague, how can you expect any data transfer to not also
be vague --> inaccurate, non-trustworthy, a total waste of time.

didn't mean to be vague, I just didn't know. The fdisk output says
FAT32, I'm inclined to believe it.


Any suggestions? I really want to recover this data, it would be great
if linux could be my hero :)

GNU/Linux is not the issue, sloppy technique brings sloppy results.

I hope that I wasn't suggesting that Linux was the issue. Your axiom
bears repeating.


Boot some linux rescue CD, and tell us what is output from
# fdisk -l

Here's the output:

Disk /dev/hdb: 160.0GB 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/tracks, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks ID System
/dev/hdb1 1 19457 156288521 5 Extended
/dev/hdb5 1 19457 156288521 c w95 FAT32 (LBA)



Then detail the source and target partitions that you are copying.
Mount any partition you want to recover as read-only (man mount),
linux is able to read NTFS and FAT32 without a problem. You need
spare partition space writable by linux to store an image of the
partition needing recovery. From then on you work with the image
file.

Let's see if I have this right. You are saying that I should be able to
mount hdb5 as read only, save the contents as an ISO (to another drive)
and then go from there? I just want to confirm all this before doing
further damage.

Thanks for your time!
brian.


Grant.
--
... The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said,
"Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"

.