jumanji disagreed with my approach in post #196 with
I'm curious why ???I entirely disagree with the first statement made by DavidE.
When i buy a new HD I use the HD manufacturers test utility, Seatools, Windows Check Disk, ATTO, Crystal Disk Info ...
If any of these tools have a problem, i want to know why, before i commit to keeping and using the HD ...
I prefer to try and find a faulty HD ASAP... not years later ...
Exactly. I just wanted to confirm that you are doing the right thing.
Now about the screenshots that you will be saving immediately after you save a sector naming that by sector no:
After saving all the important sectors, just check that you have named the sector numbers correctly by comparing it with the screenshot which shows the sector number in the sector field.
Most people make mistakes when writing large numbers.For example you would have saved Sector 722566644 but wrongly named it as 72256644 - omission of a digit. Years later when a need to restore arises you will be restoring it to a wrong sector 72256644 instead of 722566644.
So the procedure: save a sector and immediately save a screenshot of the sector too. Verify that you have named the sector file with correct sector number.Rename the saved sector file with the correct sector number in case of mistakes.
Now I assume you have correctly saved the sectors, 0,1,2,3,6,33024, 732566644, and 732566640 and verified that you have named the saved sector files with the correct sector number.You are done. ( Sectors saved - Protective MBR 0, GPT Header 1, GPT Partition Table 2, Beginning of MBR Partition 6, Beginning of data partition(VBR - NTFS) 33024, Backup of GPT Header at last sector n , here 732566644, Backup of Partition table at n-4 - here 732566640.In all you will be saving six sectors and each saved file size will be 4096bytes)
Now perform a restore operation so that you know how to restore.Make sure you have selected the correct external drive in Bootice. Performing this on your system drive by mistake will render your system inaccessible. We are going to do a write to disk operation.
For this you will be intentionally corrupting sector 0, the protective MBR, see what effect it had on the drive and then restore sector 0 to regain the drive.( A boot sector virus can corrupt sector 0 and make your drive inaccessible)
Select all fields in Sector 0 by running the mouse pointer from the first field to the last field, Right click > Fill Selection> Fill 0x00 > OK. All fields would have turned to 00. Click on Save Changes button on the tool bar. You have written all zeros to Sector 0 of your external drive.Close Bootice.
"Safely remove" your external drive and then plug it in again.You will most probably get a "you need to format the drive" message.View the drive in Windows Disk Management. You will see it as unallocated.Do not initialize.Cancel and close the Windows Disk management.
Run bootice, go to Sector 0, click on Restore from file button, select the saved sector 0 file and click on Restore.You should get a successfully restored message. Say ok and close bootice.
You have successfully restored your drive. Safely remove it and plug it in again. Your drive will be accessible again.
Your first statement I referred and disagreed was "jumanji is light years ahead of me with HD knowledge, recovery, etc., so follow his advice" I shun being put on a pedestal. Am just an ordinary user with above average skills which I honed as a member of this forum. I am nothing more than that.:)
I entirely agreed with your second statement "What I always do with a new HD is run every test i can find to see if it passes all tests, performs well, etc.I would run all the Seagate Seatools tests to make sure everything passes, run benchmark utilities, etc.I prefer to try an find a fault while the HD can be easily RMA'd if there are any problems" and had advised the OP to try what all he wants to do before putting the drive to active use. - especially saving and restoring with bootice from my perspective.
He has asked what else than Seatools. I don't know. You have to tell him the specific tools you may want him to try and familiarize with. That is why I had skipped that question (as if I had not seen that at all)
Let me post scrnshots of my work >>> Here i have saved scrnshot of sectors, 0,1,2,3,6,33024, 732566644, and 732566640 and verified the sectors and numbers match up.
I went over it and i feel i have done better this time. Once i get the comfirmation from you that it seems correct then i will start to go onto the next stage and try to corrupt some sectors and then restore.
"Select all fields in Sector 0 by running the mouse pointer from the first field to the last field"
I gave this a go and started from beginning to the very end. But as i do this the sector indicator field changes to 1.
I dragged from start until the scroll bar on the right hand side scrolled along all the way to the bottom, but problem with this is the sector indicator field number starts to increase.
May be I didn't give the instruction right.
Keep the mouse pointer on the first field in the sector which is 00, Right click and drag the pointer till the last field which is AA.
This is the normal selection process with the mouse which you adopt to select words/sentences in a text file.
I am now out for shopping. That is why I came in the morning and finished my post.
I did it.
Its back to normal. :)
I have another seagate external, but this time i think it's 1tb. Must be mbr.
Can i do the same in bootice and save the sectors? I have had it for few years now. It hasn't gone faulty yet. Im thinking to save the sectors before it does.
Also will the buttons every grey out even tho i have saved the sectors on the new drive?
Have another question that came to mind.
When a hdd goes faulty, how do you know which LBA to restore?
Do we just restore all back up files that we saved? That should bring it back to life. Lol
Your post 217: Everything looks good.:)
So now you know how to save the GPT data structure and how to restore it back. Keep the backups safely and be happy. Should you encounter any Unallocated or RAW drive in future (only this drive), simply restore the GPTdata structure. 90% your drive should be back to normal. Even if it isn't (the rest 10% probability) having restored the GPT structure and brought it to as near original as possible you are in a better position if data recovery becomes imperative.
For the MBR drive, you need to save only sector 0. It contains both the MBR code and Partition Table. In most cases where the drive turns RAW/Unallocated, simply restoring sector 0 should bring the drive alive.There will be no need to run Partition Wizard to write the partition table or rebuild MBR with it.
But be aware that in both cases if you change the partition structure like adding partitions, deleting, merging, extending etc, you need to save all this essential data (the sectors) again afresh and discard the old saved data.
Also this data has to be saved on another drive and not in the same drive.
So now i can use my new external and store things on it? Ok im looking forward to using this external for storage now. I will throw stress tests at it to. I think DavidE mentioned few programs can try out in the earlier posts.
You mentioned >> But be aware that in both cases if you change the partition structure like adding partitions, deleting, merging, extending etc, <<< Do you mean changing the partition structure from disk management, partition wizard?
So the data also has to be stored maybe on my c drive or a different external? So im thinking my 1tb mbr i can store it's back up on my new 3tb external.
Quote
