Help ! Can't get my HD to Boot

Hey pratzert,
nice to see many helping hands. Sorry, I forgot to mention that you'd need a tool to make the iso bootable from a USB-drive. I've always used one from HP, but there are many others now:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-tools-make-bootable-usb-iso-file/

Good luck

 

gambla & stapp,

Thanks very much for helping too. I am grateful for any assistance.

I'll try making a "bootable" DVD (preferably a USB Flash Drive) to utilize these software tools.

Thank you again.

 

Good Morning All.

Shortly before turning in last night I started another chkdsk /f since I had a gut feel I may have stopped the process thinking it was frozen.

I was seeing a blinking cursor and thought the process had stopped. But I left it alone for a while and it started running thru the process again.

So I left it running thru the night and this morning it was still running and at 43% completion.

I know it's taking a LONG time, but the drive is a 1.5TB drive that was almost completely full.

I left it running when I left for work and hope it is completed when I get home.

I still plan to pull the other drive out of the desktop at work that has the image on it and once the chkdsk is done, I can put the second HD in my Home desktop and see if I can extract the info from the image.

Thanks you to everyone for all the helpful suggestions.

 

pratzert,

I agree with what you are doing. That HD sounds sick. It can't read the sectors.

 

Hi All.

I just now got around to installing the other drive in my home system. It took a little while as I played around with the trashed drive and was actually able to get to some of the Data.

I kept getting the error D:\ is not accessible. I did scan the drive using the WD scanner and it reported the drive is physically good. So I played around with the "permission" and took ownership of the drive and I was able to see folders and files. So that is encouraging. I performed some searches and found an Outlook.PST file but I could not look into it and it said it had to be opened within Outlook. I didn't see the PAB(Calendar) file anywhere I get confused about what the file names are now-a-days.

I removed that drive and put in the "Data" drive, found the VHDX file and was able to mount the Image. I browsed around and and was able to see some items.

But I have not mentioned that this trashed drive ACTUALLY and a partition on it with my personal things, such as my outlook emails and calendar so as not to mix work with my personal things. I only saw the three partitions on the trashed drive before, the OEM, Recovery and the large OS.

I used the Windows Image to make the image, so did it make an image of the COMPLETE drive including any and all partitions, or just the OS image ?

Do you think I should still try to restore from the Data drive to the OS drive and assume the image is good ? Will the image re-write all the proper Boot info so it would make the drive bootable again ?

I tried using "Recuva" and it found many files but according to the timer it had another 18 hours to run to recover the files on the trashed drive.

Or should I try to recover all the files for the Image created on the Data drive.

As I said before, my priority would be to recover the email, address book and calendar, but most important are the emails because if I have them, I can rebuild the address book using the emails. If I can brose the image, where should I look to specifically find the emails... IF they were backed up.

I find it getting late again, but look forward to all the ideas and suggestions, so thanks to all.

 

pratzert,

The .pst file contains everything. Email, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks. Make sure you have the correct .pst. There might be several.

Did you see 4 .vhdx files? If there are only 3 then you omitted to select the extra partition when you did the backup.

When you have recovered your data I'd reinstall both HDs in the work computer and restore the image.

boot your Windows disk (DVD or UFD)
Repair your computer
Troubleshoot
Command Prompt
diskpart
list disk
....... I’ll assume that the boot HD is 0
select disk 0
list disk (do this to confirm. There will be a Star next to the selected disk)
clean
exit
exit (a second time)
Troubleshoot
System Image Recovery
If the correct partition location is chosen for the image location, OK. Otherwise Select a system image
Format and repartition disks should be greyed out but to be safe click Exclude disks and put a tick in all disks except Disk 0
Finish

Let us know the outcome.

 

Thanks Brian.

If the image restore is successful, does it restore all of the boot info allowing the drive to boot just as before? Does it restore the Partition tables and all ?

I believe there were only 3 vhdx files, but I'm not positive. I am hoping that if the image restore works, that partition will be available as before since that is the one that has all of the PST files... emails, calendar etc.

I thought that when an image was done, it was a complete "disk" image which included all the partitions on the drive?

If the image does not have that last partition in it, when I restore it, will it destroy any info contained in that partition? If so, I may try to recover the pst folders with some recovery software in hope of saving my emails.

I think someone said OnTrack was one of the best for that. Recuva (free) seemed to be finding a lot of files too. Have no idea how well they will be recovered though.

Regards.

 

Yes.

If you only have 3 .vhdx files don't start the restore yet. I didn't realize the .pst was in the 4th partition. What size are the .pst files you have copied off the HD?

Not necessarily. With Windows imaging you have to select any user created partitions.

Yes, get the .pst copied off that HD before you do a restore.

 

I gather you have Macrium. Does it enable you to create an image of the 4th partition on the corrupted HD?

Is so, you could restore the Windows image and then restore the Macrium image.

 

YIKES! I'll have to put the old HD in the home system and try to get them copied off the drive.

Do you suggest a good recovery software package?

 

Yes, I do have Macrium. I haven't installed it yet on my Home desktop, but I'll do that and try my luck at getting it to image the 4th partition.

But that 4th partition didn't show up under Disk Manager. Will Macrium have better luck at seeing it ?

Should I try using a more advanced partition program in hopes of seeing the 4th partition?

 

I've never used one. Sorry.

 

If you can't see your user created partition in Disk Management, that doesn't sound good for Macrium.

 

CRAP! I wonder if there is any sort of partition table backup on the disk that I can salvage?

If I can't see the partition, I wonder if I can see any files that were within it ?

 

If Macrium can't see it we could try to undelete the partition.

 

Sounds good. I'm going to call it a wrap for tonight.

Thanks for the help.

Regards.

 

What size was the partition?

 

Unfortunately, I can't recall. It was created 5 years ago.

Perhaps 500GB on a 1.5TB HD since the OS partition size was around 1TB.

 

When you next look at that HD in Disk Management, is there 500 GB of Unallocated Space at the end of the drive?

Edit... Post #30 suggests there is no Unallocated space.

 

I'll look for that and report back when I get the old drive put back in tomorrow.

I don't recall that off the top of my head, but I wasn't paying close attention.

 

Both of my desktops have room for 3 hard drives, and the Data cable on the system has a connector for 3 hard drives, but I need the other cable, which I believe is a power cable.

I don't know where to plug it in, or if it is a "jumper/splitter" cable of some sort.

It would sure be a lot easier if I could mount BOTH the other Hard drives in the desktop to work with them rather than having to remove/replace them each time.

I removed the second drive that was already in my Home desktop to make room to mount the other Hard drives to work with them.

I have another Had drive, new in the box, which I was going to use, I wonder if it has the necessary cable in the box? I'll take a look.

UPDATE: I just pulled one of the SATA cords out of the desktop at work to use at home.

So I "should" be able to install both HD's in my Home desktop.

 

Yes, I agree. It looks like there is a missing 500GB on the drive somewhere. It HAS to be that 4th partition.

I am going to try some partition software packages (free) to see if any of them can somehow recover that partition.

It would make finding those PST folders a lot easier I think.

 

In the end, you'll probably want to do a fresh install of Windows after you've formatted the drive.

And you should be back in business.

 

Hi NormanF.

Yes, that is the plan once I (hopefully) restore the missing partition and recover the files.

A format and re-install is what I'll be doing.

Regards.