Question

How to fix partition table problem

Asked by: Uncle_J

I have an Iomega MDHD10T-U2 1TB external drive that has been working just fine. Today I turned my computer off and powered the unit down. When I tried to bring it back up, the drive would not come up all the way. I took it apart to find 2 X 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives inside. I took each one and connected to another computer of mine and ran Partition Magic, just to see if the drive would be recognized. One drive seems fine, but the other gave an error "Partition Table Error #100". What other tests can I run on this drive and/or how can I fix this error.

BTW... This was my backup drive and my primary drive died a little while ago... So if I lose this data I lose everything I have accumulated in the past 10 years!

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Asked On
2009-10-29 at 20:59:47ID24857029
Tags

HDD

,

Partition Table

Topics

Computer Hard Drives

,

Storage Technology

,

Disaster Recovery

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
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Answers

 

by: garycasePosted on 2009-10-29 at 21:12:41ID: 25700141

The "1TB" drive is actually a RAID-0 array of two 500GB drives ... so if one drive failed, you've just potentially lost all of the data in the array.

NEVER run "at risk" without a backup -- when your primary drive failed, you should have replaced it and copied all of your data !!

However, all may not be lost. First, I wouldn't expect Partition Magic to "see" a correct partition structure on the 2nd drive (not necessarily even on the first) ... since these drives are not independent. Remember the #1 rule of data recovery: STOP !!! Do NOT do anything that may write to these drives.

Your best option at this point is to install a copy of RAID Reconstructor and then let it analyze these drives. [http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm ] If anything short of professional (and very expensive) data recovery can recover your data, this is it. The download is free, but you'll have to purchase a license to actually do the recovery. Also, like any good recovery software, it will NOT write to the drives under analysis ... so you'll need to have enough space on another drive to store the recovered data.

 

by: Uncle_JPosted on 2009-10-30 at 10:10:38ID: 25704963

Thank you Gary. I wish I would have seen this sooner... In my desperation I ran the SeaTool repair against the bad drive and repaired about 90 bad sectors. I come to learn that SeaTools will misinterpret sectors from a RAID disk as bad sectors. I spoke with a local data recovery shop today and they said that definitely made it more difficult to fix the issue. He said luckily SeaTools runs a standard algorithm for fixing bad sectors which he can "undo". I mentioned the program you suggested and he warned that windows may write to the drive and if I go the professional data recovery route the best thing you can do is leave the drives alone. I dont have the $2000 (minimum) to recover the data, so I am still going to attempt your suggestion. Though I am not holding my breath.

Will let you know how it goes.

 

by: garycasePosted on 2009-10-30 at 10:25:46ID: 25705100

RAID Reconstructor will NOT write to the drives.    In fact, that's probably the first program a data recovery shop would try -- before resorting to more detailed (and expensive) techniques [replacing the drive's firmware to allow lower-level access;  removing the platters in a cleanroom;  etc.].

If you've only messed up 90 sectors, RAID Reconstructor may still be able to recover at least a reasonably high percentage of your data ... certainly worth a try.

 

by: garycasePosted on 2009-10-30 at 10:27:30ID: 25705113

... one other comment (you've probably already figured this one out) ==> if you ever have any issues with a drive in the future, remember that the #1 rule of data recovery is to STOP !!    Don't do ANYTHING with that drive.    No Chkdsk;  no diagnostics;  etc.    It's time to run recovery software that does NOT write to the drive.

 

by: Uncle_JPosted on 2009-11-01 at 13:26:52ID: 31648633

While this applicaiton was not able to reconstruct my RAID, I found the information very helpful and the steps taken to ues this application wound up allowing me to recover my data. At first the RR program would not see one of my 2 drives.  So I went into computer managment->storage and a popup window showed the drive was found but needed to be initialized (or something) to be used as a disk in a RAID. At this point I figured what the hell and let it do its thing. After which, the RR app was then able to see the drive. The app was not able to reconstruct my RAID however, when I put the drives back in my enclosure, I was able to access the drive. However, I am only able to transfer bits at a time before the drive resets. I am confident that whatever it was that windows did helped. I bought a new drive and am slowly coyping the files over. Thanks.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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