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jknacnud
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Joined: 13 May 2005
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Location: Utah, USA
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 Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 6:02 am Post subject: [SOLVED] Did I kill my NTFS WinXP partition??? |
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I have two hard drives. The first has two partitions. Partition 1 has (had?!?) WinXP on it. The second partition is a VFAT partition for sharing between XP and Gentoo. On the second drive I have Gentoo (boot, swap, root).
I was having problems with the Grub boot menu. So in Gentoo I did a "grub-install /dev/hda1". When it finished I rebooted. I could still boot into Gentoo, but when I selected XP it would just go back to the Grub menu. So I went into the XP Recovery Console and did a "fixboot" and "fixmbr" to replace the boot record and menu for XP. After I rebooted it said it was missing the NTLDR. So I went back into the Recovery Console. Now the Windows Setup and Recovery Console see the XP partition as "unknown" with all space free. YIKES!!!
In Gentoo an "fdisk -l" shows /dev/hda1 still as NTFS. Did I kill my XP partition? Did the grub-install kill it? I have run grub-install before on it and it did not kill it. I have run the fixmbr and fixboot on it and it has not killed it in the past. I the XP Recovery Console I tried a chkdsk on the partition and it says there was some unrecoverable error. In Gentoo if I try to mount the partition I get:
| Code: | NTFS-fs error (device hda1): read_ntfs_boot_sector(): Primary boot sector is invalid.
NTFS-fs error (device hda1): read_ntfs_boot_sector(): Mount option errors=recover not used. Aborting without trying to recover.
NTFS-fs error (device hda1): ntfs_fill_super(): Not an NTFS volume.
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1, or too many mounted file systems |
Help?!? Is my XP data gone? Can I recover somehow?
Thanks,
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Last edited by jknacnud on Thu Jun 09, 2005 2:55 am; edited 1 time in total |
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beatryder
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Joined: 08 Apr 2005
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 6:45 am Post subject: |
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what you should have done was grub --install /dev/hda
what you can do to try and fix it is this:
boot to the XP CD as you would to install it from scratch,
Choose "r" to Recover, instead of installing a new system, NOT THE RECOVERY CONSOLE!!!
once this is done you will have to do all your windows updates, SP2 install etc.
then you will have a working XP machine. To get your dual boot back, you will then need to boot to a live CD
and Chroot into your existing gentoo install
I recomend you follow the gentoo installation guide to get the info you need to chroot and install grub.
I hope this helps you out. Please post back with your progress.
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jknacnud
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Joined: 13 May 2005
Posts: 31
Location: Utah, USA
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 1:05 pm Post subject: One character makes all the difference |
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Even before you confirmed this for me, I began to realize that there is most likely a difference between the following two commands:
| Code: | grub-install /dev/hda
grub-install /dev/hda1 |
And now that I understand that, I seem to remember only having referenced the whole disk (hda) in the past. Why did I have to put a 1 after it this time?!? I blame it on staying up late and being to cavalier with a tool that could potentially cause problems. Which it did.
Thank you for the idea to try a repair instead of playing around in the RC. I will try that out. Currently I am running gpart and testdisk to see what information they give me.
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jknacnud
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Joined: 13 May 2005
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Location: Utah, USA
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 1:42 pm Post subject: Repair? |
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So I booted back up with the XP CD and did not see what you are meaning. While booting it offers "F2" to do an Automated System Recovery. That just asks for a backup disk. I let the setup finish booting and there are three options: 1) Setup Windows (Enter), 2) Repair an install with Recovery Console, (R), 3) Quit.
If I choose to Setup Windows it takes me to the screen where I need to choose a partition. I cannot choose the partition that XP is/was on without it asking me to reformat because it says the partition is of type [Unknown].
Were you referring to something else?
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evilben
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 14 Jun 2004
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Location: GA, USA
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 2:07 pm Post subject: |
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I did this to my Windows partition last summer--I think you're pretty much screwed. I would avoid putting Grub on either the MBR or the NTFS partition where windows is installed on the first partition--I killed it just installing to the MBR, I think. Instead, you need to be booting from your second drive, with a dos fdisk MBR pointing to an active boot partition, and grub installed on that partition. I've never had any problems with that sort of setup.
I used File Scavenger to get all my data back, which is about your only option if you need data from the NTFS partition (defunct partition search). |
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beatryder
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 3:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | If I choose to Setup Windows it takes me to the screen where I need to choose a partition. I cannot choose the partition that XP is/was on without it asking me to reformat because it says the partition is of type [Unknown]. |
Right, I missed that part.
Well, I would suggest Stellar Pheonix NTFS tools.
in the future it is totaly safe to install grub on the mbr, it has been m exp that XP wont work if you install it on any partition other than hda1 (or sda1 for scsi/serial ata)
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jknacnud
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Joined: 13 May 2005
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Location: Utah, USA
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 3:46 pm Post subject: |
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| evilben wrote: | I did this to my Windows partition last summer--I think you're pretty much screwed. I would avoid putting Grub on either the MBR or the NTFS partition where windows is installed on the first partition--I killed it just installing to the MBR, I think. Instead, you need to be booting from your second drive, with a dos fdisk MBR pointing to an active boot partition, and grub installed on that partition. I've never had any problems with that sort of setup.
I used File Scavenger to get all my data back, which is about your only option if you need data from the NTFS partition (defunct partition search). |
Are you saying that you did the exact same thing that I did? You ran grub-install on a partition instead of MBR? If so I am glad to hear that you were able to recover the data. At this point that is all I am going for. I can reinstall programs and XP, but there is some data on there that I need.
It looks like the File Scavenger needs a working install of Windows in order to run instead of just being able to run from DOS or Linux. So I will try to get a working install of Windows working on that machine and see what running the program does. Unless someone knows of a good data recovery tool for Linux. Anyone?
Thanks,
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jknacnud
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 3:53 pm Post subject: |
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| beatryder wrote: | | Well, I would suggest Stellar Pheonix NTFS tools. |
Ok, another recovery tool. Thanks. I will check it out.
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jknacnud
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Joined: 13 May 2005
Posts: 31
Location: Utah, USA
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| Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2005 2:54 am Post subject: testdisk solved my problem!! |
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Thanks to Christophe Grenier and his "testdisk" utility (http://cgsecurity.org/), my data is safe!!! Not only that but I am able to boot into Windows again and all seems to be just as it was before I goofed. Woohoo!! I am so happy! I am going to go out and get a Maxtor Onetouch external hard drive and back up all my data quick! Thanks to everyone for your help.
Regards,
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