How to recover ntfs partition

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  1. Posts : 10,796
    Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bits 7601 Multiprocessor Free Service Pack 1
       #51

    All went exactly as I hoped and expected. I hope you learned a lot
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  2. Posts : 20
    Windows 7 x64, Ubuntu 12.04.3 64bit
    Thread Starter
       #52

    Kaktussoft said:
    All went exactly as I hoped and expected. I hope you learned a lot
    Yes, I did:

    Dont change partition sizes without backup and when you already have problems with another disk ^^

    And a lot more of course

    Thank you very much again! :)
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 7,055
    Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit
       #53

    Congrats Gerrit, you got all fixed. And hats off to Kaktussoft too. Did an excellent job.

    And a request for additional info gathering.

    Using Bootice, take a snapshot of sector 0 and sector 63 ( Run Bootice, select drive>sector edit). I just want to compare it with my Seagate 1 TB.

    Also save these two sectors and anytime you have problems in future, just restore these two sectors from the backup and mostly this should bring the drive back to life. Note though, if anytime you modify the partition, such as multi partitioning, you should discard the old backups and take a fresh backup of Sector 0 and 63.

    For GPT drives, Lost partitions!

    As a concluding remark, in the current thread, the OP who is well-versed in Linux used Linux to fix the sector count and the rest followed. Now what about those who have nil acquaintance with Linux - like me :). For these people of course I found that Test Disk can come to rescue. Advanced NTFS Boot and MFT Repair - CGSecurity
    Last edited by jumanji; 08 Jan 2014 at 22:12.
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 10,796
    Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bits 7601 Multiprocessor Free Service Pack 1
       #54

    jumanji said:
    Congrats Gerrit, you got all fixed. And hats off to Kaktussoft too. Did an excellent job.

    And a request for additional info gathering.

    Using Bootice, take a snapshot of sector 0 and sector 63 ( Run Bootice, select drive>sector edit). I just want to compare it with my Seagate 1 TB.

    Also save these two sectors and anytime you have problems in future, just restore these two sectors from the backup and mostly this should bring the drive back to life. Note though, if anytime you modify the partition, such as multi partitioning, you should discard the old backups and take a fresh backup of Sector 0 and 63.

    For GPT drives, Lost partitions!

    As a concluding remark, in the current thread, the OP who is well-versed in Linux used Linux to fix the sector count and the rest followed. Now what about those who have nil acquaintance with Linux - like me :). For these people of course I found that Test Disk can come to rescue. Advanced NTFS Boot and MFT Repair - CGSecurity
    sector 0 has only:
    • disk signature (each physical drive has a different signature)
    • master boot code. Normally the win7 boot code. It instructs to load the volume boot sector of ACTIVE partition. so actually it's loading sector 63 afterwards
    • Partition table. Begin and end sector of each partition. And filesystem id, and some flags like ACTIVE.
    Why do you want a dump of sector 0.... having problems? Test Disk can also be run under linux.
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 7,055
    Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit
       #55

    Kaktussoft said:
    jumanji said:
    Congrats Gerrit, you got all fixed. And hats off to Kaktussoft too. Did an excellent job.

    And a request for additional info gathering.

    Using Bootice, take a snapshot of sector 0 and sector 63 ( Run Bootice, select drive>sector edit). I just want to compare it with my Seagate 1 TB.

    Also save these two sectors and anytime you have problems in future, just restore these two sectors from the backup and mostly this should bring the drive back to life. Note though, if anytime you modify the partition, such as multi partitioning, you should discard the old backups and take a fresh backup of Sector 0 and 63.

    For GPT drives, Lost partitions!

    As a concluding remark, in the current thread, the OP who is well-versed in Linux used Linux to fix the sector count and the rest followed. Now what about those who have nil acquaintance with Linux - like me :). For these people of course I found that Test Disk can come to rescue. Advanced NTFS Boot and MFT Repair - CGSecurity

    sector 0 has only:
    • disk signature (each physical drive has a different signature)
    • master boot code. Normally the win7 boot code. It instructs to load the volume boot sector of ACTIVE partition. so actually it's loading sector 63 afterwards
    • Partition table. Begin and end sector of each partition. And filesystem id, and some flags like ACTIVE.
    Why do you want a dump of sector 0.... having problems? Test Disk can also be run under linux.

    :) Why do you think I am having problems?

    Anyway: "disk signature (each physical drive has a different signature)". hmmm... I have two physical external drives one 320GB and one 1 TB. 320GB was formatted by me atleast two to three years back. The 1TB is only months old and retains the factory format. Both have the same signature, A4 B5 73 00 !!!!!!

    OK, the PW Partition Info and File System Info put out by the OP matches that of my 1TB exactly. I am just curious to see the byte by byte matching of the 0th and 63 sector.

    User data is always written from the 64th Sector (in a single partition drive.) So irrespective of what is contained in sector 0 and sector 63 - I am not going to teach the user what 0 and 63 contain -, if one has backed up these sectors - just 520 bytes each , in an exigency these can be restored and in most cases ( though not all) it can bring the drive back to life. It will definitely help those who are in the habit shrinking and resizing and run into problems.
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 10,796
    Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bits 7601 Multiprocessor Free Service Pack 1
       #56

    jumanji said:
    Kaktussoft said:
    jumanji said:
    Congrats Gerrit, you got all fixed. And hats off to Kaktussoft too. Did an excellent job.

    And a request for additional info gathering.

    Using Bootice, take a snapshot of sector 0 and sector 63 ( Run Bootice, select drive>sector edit). I just want to compare it with my Seagate 1 TB.

    Also save these two sectors and anytime you have problems in future, just restore these two sectors from the backup and mostly this should bring the drive back to life. Note though, if anytime you modify the partition, such as multi partitioning, you should discard the old backups and take a fresh backup of Sector 0 and 63.

    For GPT drives, Lost partitions!

    As a concluding remark, in the current thread, the OP who is well-versed in Linux used Linux to fix the sector count and the rest followed. Now what about those who have nil acquaintance with Linux - like me :). For these people of course I found that Test Disk can come to rescue. Advanced NTFS Boot and MFT Repair - CGSecurity


    sector 0 has only:
    • disk signature (each physical drive has a different signature)
    • master boot code. Normally the win7 boot code. It instructs to load the volume boot sector of ACTIVE partition. so actually it's loading sector 63 afterwards
    • Partition table. Begin and end sector of each partition. And filesystem id, and some flags like ACTIVE.
    Why do you want a dump of sector 0.... having problems? Test Disk can also be run under linux.

    :) Why do you think I am having problems?

    Anyway: "disk signature (each physical drive has a different signature)". hmmm... I have two physical external drives one 320GB and one 1 TB. 320GB was formatted by me atleast two to three years back. The 1TB is only months old and retains the factory format. Both have the same signature, A4 B5 73 00 !!!!!!

    OK, the PW Partition Info and File System Info put out by the OP matches that of my 1TB exactly. I am just curious to see the byte by byte matching of the 0th and 63 sector.

    User data is always written from the 64th Sector (in a single partition drive.) So irrespective of what is contained in sector 0 and sector 63 - I am not going to teach the user what 0 and 63 contain -, if one has backed up these sectors - just 520 bytes each , in an exigency these can be restored and in most cases ( though not all) it can bring the drive back to life. It will definitely help those who are in the habit shrinking and resizing and run into problems.
    Are the two disks with same disk signature clones? Did you ever attach them at the same time to windows? Blogs - Mark's Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs
      My Computer


  7. Posts : 7,055
    Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit
       #57

    Nope, these drives are not cloned.( I had seen Mark Russinovich’s blog long ago.)

    As I said in my post the Seagate 320GB drive is atleast 3 year old, and as is my usual I had wiped it clean and formatted it before using it as my Data backup drive.

    The Seagate 1 TB drive is actually not mine - I pulled it from my daughter to post the screenshots to the OP in this thread with a similar 1 TB drive. And as I said it is just a month or two old and retains the factory format.

    After reading your statement "disk signature (each physical drive has a different signature)", I was casually examining the signatures of the two drives, of course one at a time - since I had only one port free on my monitor - and lo and behold your statement was not true, atleast in this instance :)

    Not unusual, it can happen at times on similar drives but I was pretty much surprised to find it so on two drives of different times, different capacities and differently formatted.

    My Seagate 320GB drive (Formatted by me)

    How to recover ntfs partition-sg320gb.jpg

    Seagate 1 TB drive: Factory Format

    How to recover ntfs partition-sg-1tb.jpg

    The NTFS Boot Sector signature for all NTFS formatted drives is unique and will always be 55 AA irrespective of which formatting utility was used to format.

    [OP may please note: My posts #32 and # 41. In respect of non-bootable external drives it will hardly matter whether the drive has Windows MBR code or none except those indicated in the second screenshot above.]

    OK, it does not bother me that both these drives have the same Windows Disk Signature because I am not the user of that 1 TB drive. And I also know pretty well that when both are plugged in, the second plugged drive will not show. Signature collision.

    To those who encounter this problem occasionally, I had also indicated the solutions.

    22 Jan 12 Two Seagate External Drives, one not recognised

    13 Jan 13 https://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/273099-only-one-hard-drive-being-recognized-time.html

    The diskpart way of changing the Windows Disk Signature:

    How to recover ntfs partition-10-01-2014-20-42-58.jpg

    ( I didn't press ENTER in the last step, since I do not want to change it.)

    But if I were to change it on the 1TB Seagate drive, I will quietly change one field in the Bootice Sector Edit to 01 to read 01 73 B5 A4 and write it to sector 0. :)
      My Computer


 
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