DD10.0.2160 won't recover lost partitions

[K0LO]

...Leaving us only to wonder why Windows Disk Management made this calculation error. When you get things recovered to your satisfaction then you may want to make a change to the Data and Photos partitions.

If you look at the PTEDIT screen shots in your post #22, the value of "Sectors Before" in PTEdit4 and PTEdit5 are nonstandard (67 and 65 sectors, respectively). These should be 63 to conform to standards in effect when XP was released. I don't know if this had anything to do with the original problem, but it wouldn't hurt to fix these so that it isn't a question when you use XP Disk Management again.

To fix, save an image of the partition with TI. Restore the image to the same location and TI will force alignment to the standard offset of 63 sectors.

Best of luck with the rest of the recovery task!

[Kritker]

Originally Posted by k0lo

Hopefully now the Recovery Agent can locate your missing partitions at the end of the drive.

Recovery Expert is now running and is currently displaying "Analyzing partition S", where S is the letter for partition Photos at the moment, so I am not sure what it is actually doing but I suppose I should let it run for a while, but how long is a while? I really do wish that programs like this provided better status messages.

[K0LO]

It might take a LONG time. I believe it is looking through the disk to find sectors that look like the beginnings / ends of a partition. On a large hard disk this may take a while.

If Recovery Expert can't find the original starting and ending sectors of the former partitions then you may have to use a file recovery tool like GetDataBack or equivalent.

[MudCrab]

Originally Posted by k0lo

...Leaving us only to wonder why Windows Disk Management made this calculation error.

I think the answer to that is in Post #1. The Extended Partition Container was "split" by DD when the partitions were created. Disk Management couldn't see the drive correctly before the partition was deleted and deleting it let Disk Management corrupt the rest of the drive as it "re-combined" the Extended Partition Container. That's my guess, anyway.

We've seen it before where you have a setup like
[Primary][Start - EPC][Logical][Primary][Logical][Logical][END - EPC]
and then change it to
[Primary][Start - EPC][Primary][Logical][Logical]...[Logical]...

The Extended Partition Container still starts between the first two Primary Partitions even though the first Logical partition now exists after the second Primary. It may end after the second Logical partition or DD may move it to after the third one. Remember that DD just goes by the links and doesn't seem to care about the container or the partition order. Disk Management expects all Logical partitions to be inside one contiguous container.

[Kritker]

Originally Posted by k0lo

...Leaving us only to wonder why Windows Disk Management made this calculation error. When you get things recovered to your satisfaction then you may want to make a change to the Data and Photos partitions.

If you look at the PTEDIT screen shots in your post #22, the value of "Sectors Before" in PTEdit4 and PTEdit5 are nonstandard (67 and 65 sectors, respectively). These should be 63 to conform to standards in effect when XP was released. I don't know if this had anything to do with the original problem, but it wouldn't hurt to fix these so that it isn't a question when you use XP Disk Management again.

To fix, save an image of the partition with TI. Restore the image to the same location and TI will force alignment to the standard offset of 63 sectors.

I have already restored the Data and Photos from the image backups that I had made to new partitions on a freshly formatted drive (actually the first drive in all the screen shots). I have checked these partitions with PTedit and the first entry in each "Sectors Before" column is 63 for all the PTedit screens for the new drive. Once I have recovered the last partition(s) and saved the data (and double checked that my image backups of Data and Photos actually contained everything from the now recovered partitions) I will completely reformat and repartition the "broken" drive.

Recovery Expert is still running - although its (diskdirector.exe's) CPU utilization in Task Manager is currently 00 - not a good sign I think. I am going to reboot and try it again, without first running DD itself.

Well, the reboot worked and Recovery Expert managed to get past the "Analyzing ..." phase and I now have it doing an "automatic" scan to see what it can find. I'll have it do a manual scan next if needed ... uh oh, I think I jsut realized that the manual scan could have been restricted to the last 200 GB or so - oh well, I can hope that Recovery Expert is smart enough not to scan areas that aren't unallocated? I'll find out.

[K0LO]

Originally Posted by MudCrab

I think the answer to that is in Post #1. The Extended Partition Container was "split" by DD when the partitions were created. Disk Management couldn't see the drive correctly before the partition was deleted and deleting it let Disk Management corrupt the rest of the drive as it "re-combined" the Extended Partition Container. That's my guess, anyway.

That's right -- I had forgotten this little detail. That's a good explanation of what happened.

[Kritker]

Originally Posted by MudCrab

I think the answer to that is in Post #1. The Extended Partition Container was "split" by DD when the partitions were created. Disk Management couldn't see the drive correctly before the partition was deleted and deleting it let Disk Management corrupt the rest of the drive as it "re-combined" the Extended Partition Container. That's my guess, anyway.

We've seen it before where you have a setup like
[Primary][Start - EPC][Logical][Primary][Logical][Logical][END - EPC]
and then change it to
[Primary][Start - EPC][Primary][Logical][Logical]...[Logical]...

The Extended Partition Container still starts between the first two Primary Partitions even though the first Logical partition now exists after the second Primary. It may end after the second Logical partition or DD may move it to after the third one. Remember that DD just goes by the links and doesn't seem to care about the container or the partition order. Disk Management expects all Logical partitions to be inside one contiguous container.

I was trying to be so careful, especially after Mudcrab pointed out this sort of thing to me earlier this year, but I lost track of what I had done to this disk and then, in a moment of inattention, I deleted the first partition using Windows' Disk Management instead of using DD10. I guess I still expect DD10 to provide a bit more help in making sure that partitions adhere to Windows' standards when that is what the user wants. Not everyone (I, for example) wants or needs the full range of partitions that DD10 can provide,

I am going to be even more careful in future and I am also being even more careful to back up everything. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, I, like everyone else, tend to become a little sloppy if things go well for a while.

Update: Acronis DD10's Recovery Expert, in automatic mode, has just listed the 10 GB Work partition (status: Deleted) in its search for deleted partitions and is continuing to search.

I very much appreciate the expertise and especially patience that you, MudCrab and Mark, have shown me in this thread and all of us in this forum.

[K0LO]

Originally Posted by Kritker

...in a moment of inattention, I deleted the first partition using Windows' Disk Management instead of using DD10...

Don't feel bad - I did the same thing myself once. A few milliseconds after I hit the "OK" key it dawned on me that I shouldn't have done that. Three partitions vanished in a *poof*. This happened a few years ago when I had no idea how to recover a deleted partition, but fortunately I did have TI backups to restore from.

Originally Posted by Kritker

I very much appreciate the expertise and especially patience that you, MudCrab and Mark, have shown me in this thread and all of us in this forum.

You're quite welcome. This is a good way for all of us to learn.

[Kritker]

Originally Posted by Kritker

Update: Acronis DD10's Recovery Expert, in automatic mode, has just listed the 10 GB Work partition (status: Deleted) in its search for deleted partitions and is continuing to search.

And that's all it did. It found nothing else. Now it hangs on analyzing partition R. Even when it ran, quitting it left DiskDirector.exe running with no accessible windows. I couldn't kill it either.

I am going to have to cut my losses. I have back most of what I lost and I'll just have to wade through the mess of recovered files and see what I can make of it.

I think I will give up on Disk Director. It's been almost a week and nothing from Acronis tech support. I'll use only Disk Management to manipulate partitions from here on in and I'll try something call GAG as a boot manager.

I won't give up on TrueImage 11 just yet. It seems to be a bit more robust than DD, even to having drivers that actually see my hard drives.

[K0LO]

That's frustrating after all that work and after coming so close. Let it rest for a while and then before you reformat the drive try Paul's suggestion. Use DD to delete all of the partitions then see if Recovery Expert can find the one you're missing. At this point you have nothing to lose.

[Kritker]

Originally Posted by k0lo

That's frustrating after all that work and after coming so close. Let it rest for a while and then before you reformat the drive try Paul's suggestion. Use DD to delete all of the partitions then see if Recovery Expert can find the one you're missing. At this point you have nothing to lose.

You ARE right. I'll let it rest for a bit. I am in the process of rebuilding my entire system, after a fresh Windows XP Pro SP3 install from a streamed Windows CD and I don't need the affected hard drive yet so I can let it sit for a bit and try MudCrab's suggestion. Right now I've just reverted back to my system partition of yesterday, without DD10 installed.

Thanks again for all your help.

[Kritker]

Originally Posted by k0lo

Let it rest for a while and then before you reformat the drive try Paul's suggestion. Use DD to delete all of the partitions then see if Recovery Expert can find the one you're missing. At this point you have nothing to lose.

Well, although I can't seem to run DD10 from within Win XP when my "messed up" drive is connected, it seems that the Safe version from the CD will run, now that the partition info has been "fixed". I'll let it run tonight to see what it can do with MudCrab's suggested recovery strategy. I have no expectations at this point.

The 10 GB Work partition it "recovered" for me last night was unusable and in the wrong place but I'll remove all the partitions from the disk, as MudCrab suggested, and let it find them all. I am curious as to what it will find.

In the meantime, I have switched from OS Selector (OSS) to the GAG boot loader, see http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showp...09&postcount=5 with some success. It's entirely manual but it is exactly what I want and need.

[Kritker]

Originally Posted by Kritker

Well, although I can't seem to run DD10 from within Win XP when my "messed up" drive is connected, it seems that the Safe version from the CD will run, now that the partition info has been "fixed". I'll let it run tonight to see what it can do with MudCrab's suggested recovery strategy.

Success at last.

After recovering the third (first logical) partition (I didn't bother with the two primary partitions in front of it) on my problem disk (after removing all partitions, as MudCrab had suggested, and persisting, as Mark had suggested), using the safe version of DD10 from the CD, I tried once again to run it from within Win XP and this time it started and ran fine. After a day and a half or so of running it in "Manual" and "Complete" (if that's the right term for not "fast") modes and finding only one, the fourth (second logical) partition, plus a large number of smaller, spurious, partitions, I gave up and recovered the one that it had found. At that point I couldn't afford the week or so that it seemed it would take to scan the rest of the disk.

I ran it again in "manual" and "complete" modes and it quickly found the next partition. I recovered it and then scanned for the next, which it also found, quickly. I proceeded in the same fashion to recover, fully all the remaining partitions on the disk.

So, the lesson I learned is, that if I am trying to recover the whole disk, not to do it all at once but to recover one partition at a time and then restart scanning on the remaining unallocated space.

Once I started using this approach it took 5 minutes and I was done, versus another week of waiting for the complete scan to finish.

In conclusion, thank you MudCrab and Mark. Thanks to you I was finally able to recover the last partition on this disk, with all its data intact. I have not yet heard back from Acronis' tech support. Once again I received more meaningful help, more quickly, here on the forum from the two of you than I received from Acronis' tech support.

MudCrab and Mark, thank you again.

[K0LO]

Originally Posted by Kritker

...I ran it again in "manual" and "complete" modes and it quickly found the next partition. I recovered it and then scanned for the next, which it also found, quickly. I proceeded in the same fashion to recover, fully all the remaining partitions on the disk.

Wow, that's an amazing success story. In thinking about what happened, I'll bet that once your missing link in the chain of logical partitions was found, it contained the link to the next partition, so Recovery Expert was able to quickly locate the next partition, and the next, and so on, by just following along the chain.

I'm glad things worked out for you and that you got your missing data back. Congratulations!

One lesson that I've learned from this is that primary partitions are not such a bad thing to have. Using them all up first before creating logical partitions may be a wise move. To date, I've tended to use only one or two primaries and make all the rest logical. My reason for doing that was to reserve slots in the partition table for future primary partitions. Maybe that's not the best thing to do. Your saga illustrates what can happen if that chain of logical partitions gets broken.

[MudCrab]

Originally Posted by Kritker

In conclusion, thank you MudCrab and Mark. Thanks to you I was finally able to recover the last partition on this disk, with all its data intact.

That's really good news! Thanks for posting back with the results.

[Kritker]

I finally heard back from Acronis after resending them the report they asked me to produce:

Hello,

Thank you for the provided information.

We are really sorry for not replying such a long time, we've experienced some problems with our e-mail database and therefore we couldn't provide our customers with fast answers. We will do our best to prevent this situation from happening in future. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience you experienced because of such big delay with the response.

According to the latest report, you've already created a new partitions instead of the deleted ones. If so, Recovery Expert will not recover them.

We are really sorry for the inconvenience.

We are always at your service.

Thank you.

That is the extent of Acronis' help on this matter and, as you can see from the rest of this thread, it is not only inadequate, it is totally wrong.

Thanks again to MudCrab and Mark.