Ultimate Boot CD

History: I had a good working system with 2 SATA HDD's in a RAID-mirror and one IDE-HDD set as master with a dvd-rw slave (I inserted the IDE temporarely for backing up my data before partitioning the SATA mirror; there's only one IDE connector on my mobo by the way).

I screwed up all 3 drives using Paragon Partition manager . After disabling the RAID in BIOS and disabling 2 of the 3 HDD's I was able to approach one of the SATA HDD's using the Paragon recovery disk and to re-partition it, so I could at least install Windows XP on it. The other HDD's could not be approached in this way.


Now I try to restore/save my data using UBCD. Thing is, I can only boot from it when only my healthy HDD (or no HDD at all) is booted. When either one of the corrupt HDD's are booted (with or without the healthy HDD) the following happens:
- "Press any key to boot from CD.." appears for very short time
- Then something like "scanning system" appears, also for a short time
- Subsequently the screen turns black and stays that way. DVD-player remains spinning for a while.

My questions are:
- Is there any (other) way to approach drives and save/restore the data?
- If not: is there any way to repartition/reformat the corrupt HDD's, as now they are completely useless: Windows, Paragon Recovery CD and UBCD all hang when either one of them is booted.

Any help would be highly appreciated

If you already reinstalled an OS on one of the Sata drives, try disconnecting all other drives and getting that one set up and running correctly. After all seems fine, reconnect the other Sata drive and set as Sata (non-raid) in BIOS. You may then be able to run testdisk or checkdisk or other drive repair or data recovery programs. If all else fails with UBCD (DOS) and you have a working XP install you can try downloading and building a UBCD4Win CD and try to access the corrupted drives that way. You can also try a bootable linux CD/DVD like Knoppix, RIP, and see if you can access the data for recovery that way..

Hope the info helps...

The Piney

The Piney wrote:If you already reinstalled an OS on one of the Sata drives, try disconnecting all other drives and getting that one set up and running correctly.

Done that

After all seems fine, reconnect the other Sata drive and set as Sata (non-raid) in BIOS.

Tried that. Windows (or "anything else" it seems) just won't boot with either of the corrupt drives connected.

You can also try a bootable linux CD/DVD like Knoppix, RIP, and see if you can access the data for recovery that way..

Yeah, I allready downloaded Knoppix and Digital Dolly (?) and I'll give them a shot as well. Never heard of RIP, I'll look into that, thanx! You think using UBCD4Win will make a difference?

RIP is "Recovery is Possible" - you can get it here -> http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robo ... linux/rip/

You can also check out "System Rescue CD" here -> http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

I have both of these added to my UBCD (DOS) CD and they work well.

It's hard to say that UBCD4Win will fare any better since your saying is won't boot at all with the corrupted drives connected. I've heard of and seen problems with Sata drives that were fixed when the Sata cable was replaced so that's at least worth a try.

Are the corrupted drives detected in the BIOS?

As a last resort I would try to put the corrupted drives in another system and see if you can get access to the files/data you want off. If you can I would then run a wiping program such as DBaN (USE CAUTION), or Eraser to totally clean the drives and write out all 0s (Zero fill)

Also what kind of hardware are you working with? I have almost the same setup on my current work system except I have 2 PATA controllers. I have been using Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8 to image the RAID 0 array. If you can get the data off of the corrupted drive you should be able to rebuild the RAID 0 array in BIOS by selecting the source as the cleanly loaded drive and let it go, although that can take quite some time.

I managed to recover my DATA

I connected the corrupt SATA drive while in Windows (hot swapping), and the new hardware was found and installed correctly!

Though the partitions didn't show up in my computer or in disk manager, I could approach the disk using Active@ Partition Recovery for Windows. First thing I did was to recover the files in my "Data" directory and save them on my healthy disk. Looks okay!

Now I'm performing a deep scan in the corrupt disk, and I'll try to restore the partitions. If this works I don't even have to install all my program files all over again.

I have been using Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8 to image the RAID 0 array. If you can get the data off of the corrupted drive you should be able to rebuild the RAID 0 array in BIOS by selecting the source as the cleanly loaded drive and let it go, although that can take quite some time.

This is my ultimate goal. Are these the steps I have to take?:
(-repair IDE, backup all data, disconnect from PC)
- Get everything properly installed on one healthy SATA disk
- Delete partitions on the other SATA
- Clone healthy SATA to unpartitioned SATA using Paragon
(-start up, test disks, power off)
- Boot, enter BIOS, enable RAID
- configure RAID (-> don't know if I can select source)

Thank you so much for your feedback!

As a last resort I would try to put the corrupted drives in another system and see if you can get access to the files/data you want off. If you can I would then run a wiping program such as DBaN (USE CAUTION)

Looked into this. Appears like this is the road to go with the IDE drive, and I'm downloading at the moment. Guess I'll give it a go in my own system first though (I'll disconnect the SATA). Thanks for the tip!

PS: Active@ deep scan is now at 15% (500 GB HDD) which took over 45 minutes

rjpub wrote:I managed to recover my DATA

This is my ultimate goal. Are these the steps I have to take?:
(-repair IDE, backup all data, disconnect from PC)
- Get everything properly installed on one healthy SATA disk
- Delete partitions on the other SATA
- Clone healthy SATA to unpartitioned SATA using Paragon
(-start up, test disks, power off)
- Boot, enter BIOS, enable RAID
- configure RAID (-> don't know if I can select source)

Thank you so much for your feedback!

That might work - different system work differently so you may be fine with that and if it works I would go that route first - may be quicker. If you have a problem doing it that way - Delete the partition(s) on the corrupt SATA drive and when you reboot, go into the RAID configuration utility and set as RAID 0 and rebuild using the good/freshly reloaded drive drive as the source.

If you get the corrupt drive working normally you can use that as the source drive and all your loaded programs and data will be restored and back to the way it used to be.

I will tell you this - When I had to rebuild my RAID 0 array a while back it took several hours and it didn't seem to be going anywhere. I rebooted and selected to rebuild in the background, it took over a day and over several reboots but seems to be fine now.

Good luck...

Thanks Piney, this makes sense. I guess I'll have to go for plan B (let the RAID controller rebuild the mirror, because making a clone with Paragon failed again. (Or maybe I'll just back-up my DATA on the IDE, format my HD's, build the RAID and install Windows on the empty RAID. The thing is that it's not so straight-forward to install Windows XP on RAID. Actually, trying to update the drivers by removing them completely and reinstalling them again is what got me into this mess. Anyway, I bought myself a floppy-drive today, because if I go for plan C I'll be needing it).

I'll give you an update:

- I tried to wipe the corrupt disks with DBAN. It failed with non-fatal errors (est. wipe-time >220 hr!)
- I succesfully wiped the disk with Avctive@ KillDisk (free version for DOS)
- Then I used Paragon to clone the Windows partition to both wiped disks (one for the mirror, one as a backup).
- Then I started up PQ Partition Magic, which informed me of several errors. I ignored them, but then both ("corrupt") drives appeared as BAD, and the partitions were not visible.
- So I restarted PM and let it fix the errors (this in fact is what happened the very first time, see history)
- Upon reboot same thing all over again: PC wouldn't boot, nor would UBCD, so I had to kill both drives all over again.

By the Way: PM keeps reporting Error 116 Partition table Begin and Start inconsistent on my "healthy" drive. I don't dare letting it fix it untill I got all my data secure. On the other hand: maybe it's this what is causing my problems after cloning. Guess I'll give plan A another go, but this time using DriveImage, which I can lend from a friend, in stead of Paragon.

it took over a day and over several reboots but seems to be fine now.

Have you got any idea how much time I got into this operation, half of the time in DOS? Let me put it this way: I don't get much work done lately. Thanks for sharing!