| Author | Message | ||
     magnus Username: magnus Registered: N/A |
For unknown reasons, 2 of my disks have gotten their parameters changed to extremely small values. BIOS and Windows reports them as 32 megabytes. They worked before on the exact same installation. If I open one of the disks with WinHex, I get a log message similar to this: Traces of a 1TB (... Sectors) NTFS partition found in sector 63. Size not plausible. Will not be added to partition list. (I haven't got the drive here with me, so I can't tell you the amount of sectors) Now to my actual question: The disk parameters were changed by something. I'm hoping that setting them back to reflect the actual drive will help me recover all data on them. Can I 'safely' use Set Disk Parameters? Will setting them wrong actually harm the drive or the data on it? I intend to look up the actual values on the vendor's site. I'm hoping I can try out different values. Ie, I change it to one set of values, but if that didn't work, I will still be able to try other values without destroying the data or the drive in the process. Thanks much for any help. WinHex has given me lots of joy. | ||
| Corrie Theron Username: corrie Registered: N/A |
Hi Magnus If the drive is a Seagate, look at this: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/374/1050374/seagate-barracudas-7200-11-failing You will need to use a specialist data recovery lab to recover the data if it is that  Later Corrie | ||
| Corrie Theron Username: corrie Registered: N/A |
PS: It might not be mentioned in the article, but the 32MB issue is also typical of that failure with some of the Seagate drives. We have had quite a few of those situations with our customers bringing their drives in for recovery C | ||
| magnus Username: magnus Registered: N/A |
Hi Corrie. Thankfully, it's a Western Digital drive. The other drive is a Samsung. The Samsung one is brand new, which really adds to my confusion on this whole issue. Here's a quick rundown on what has happened: 1) My computer had 3 disks in it. We'll call them disk 1, 2 and 3. Disk 1 has the Windows XP boot partition. 2) I shut down the computer and unplugged 2 of the drives (I was simply disconnecting what I thought were disk 2 & 3). Started the computer and found that I had disconnected the boot drive. 3) Shutdown again, connected the boot drive and the new Samsung drive. Now drive 2 is disconnected. 4) Boot into Windows. 5) Only disk 1 is now a valid disk. The other 2 drives are now reported to be 32 MB in size. Something happened somehow, but I really have no idea what or how. Please don't post a link to an article about Samsung and WD disks breaking down all over the world, I may burst into tears ;) About "Set Disk Parameters": Is this for WinHex only? Or does it actually alter something on the drive? | ||
| Corrie Theron Username: corrie Registered: N/A |
mm, it is quite a strange situation then.. The problem I am seeing is that even the BIOS is detecting them as 32MB?? Which would tell me that it is a physical detection issue.. If it was only Windows that had the problem, I would be more inclined to think that it might be file system corruption... If I had to take a shot, I would say start by connecting the drives to another PC and just check if the BIOS sees them correctly. Some older PC's had an issue like that detecting the bigger drives, which would be strange, because it was detecting before.. Still, try different ports, different cables etc. If they still don't detect correctly, it might be that you did something that damaged the drives Firmware somehow.. Hope this helps and good luck.. | ||
| magnus Username: magnus Registered: N/A |
Thanks for the reply. Yep, it's really quite strange. I have tried different SATA connectors on the mainboard. Also plugged one of the faulty drives to the same connector and cable that works for the boot partition. But no go. I have also tried Western Digital Data Lifeguard, but it couldn't see anything strange with the drive. It happily reported it as a 32 MB drive. I think my best bet is "Set Disk Parameters" in WinHex, I just want to make sure I can't destroy the drive by inputting wrong values. | ||
| magnus Username: magnus Registered: N/A |
Actually, found the exact message in the WinHex log from one of my posts: Traces of a 932 GB (1953520002 sectors) NTFS partition found in sector 63. Size not plausible. Will not be added to partition list. If I set Sector Count to 1953520002 and the drive firmware isn't toast, perhaps I can get data from the drive? What about the other parameters (cylinders, heads, sectors/track), can I get away without setting them seeing as they're optional? | ||
| magnus Username: magnus Registered: N/A |
I've just tried to set the disk parameters to 1953520002 sectors. Then manually chose partition start at 7E00 (Begins with EB 52 90 "NTFS". Then I get this error: Cannot read from Sector 6 291 519 of SAMSUNG HD103UJ. The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. (This is on the other disk I mentioned, Samsung 1 TB) So, a read that surpasses the 32 MB limit fails. If I choose to open the partition and ignore read errors, the partition comes up empty. Does anyone have any idea what else I could try? | ||
| magnus Username: magnus Registered: N/A |
I have an update on this issue. Using "Ultimate Boot CD" and HDAT2, I had the drives capacity corrected. After that, WinHex could address the entire partition. However, Windows wouldn't recognize the partition since "Sectors Preceding Partition 1" had been set to 0. The partition type had also been changed to FAT16. Changing type to 07 and preceding sectors to 63, Windows recognized the partition again and all is well. Doesn't explain what changed those parameters in the first place, but atleast I can access the data again. |