Power failure caused NTFS partition problems - Cannot boot Recovery console to fix
A power failure occured an I am unable to boot into the Recovery Console to run chkdsk to fix my NTFS partitions that have the dirty bit set. I thought no problem, I will just boot with Drive Image 7 and restore from backup. Drive Image gets the same STOP error as Windows which is a BE stop error in NTFS.SYS. I have tried some of the recovery utilities that I have found on the web and either they hang while loading or don't do what I need them to do. Partition Magic 8 is the only utility that works, but unfortunately, it has no way of fixing this problem. It reports error 1516 - Partiion dismounted improperly for all the partitions on all 3 hard drives. Solution is to run CHKDSK, but since I can't get Windows to boot into the Recovery Console to do that, I am stuck. I tried copying the backup files from one of the partitions using the NTFS DOS utility, but they are larger than 4gb, so that won't work either.
How can I reset this partition dirty bit or is there a utility somewhere that can fix this sort of situation. If partition magic can see the partitions, it seems that the data is all still there but I need a way of accessing it. I am willing to pay a reasonable price for a utility if I am sure it is going to work.
Anyone have any suggestions?
How can I reset this partition dirty bit or is there a utility somewhere that can fix this sort of situation. If partition magic can see the partitions, it seems that the data is all still there but I need a way of accessing it. I am willing to pay a reasonable price for a utility if I am sure it is going to work.
Anyone have any suggestions?
ASKER
Yes and I get the STOP error that I mentioned. I even reinstalled windows on a different drive but booting into that new installation with the 2 backup drives attached results in the same STOP error. If I unplug the power on the 2 backup drives, it boots fine. For some reason when trying to mount the partitions on the backup drives, NTFS has a problem resulting in the STOP error.
ATTEMPTED_WRITE_TO_READONL
I find it really strange that you're getting this error message...
Try connecting it to another computer (as slave) to get the data off.
I find it really strange that you're getting this error message...
Try connecting it to another computer (as slave) to get the data off.
ASKER
Yes, that is the message I am getting. After work today, I will try your suggestion. Right now, I am able to get the old version of Drive Image running and am attempting to make an image of those drives to the good drive. Maybe that will work. If not, I will try moving it to another computer. Thanks.
Ok, good luck ;-)
LucF
LucF
ASKER
OK...none of this has worked. Moving the drives to another computer causes the same error on that computer. Drive Image 2002 copies the backup images, but then when I try to restore the file using the Backup Image Browser, the restore hangs after restoring 2gb of data. If I restore the entire drive, then I get the same error all over again.
It is hard for me to believe that there is no utility to fix bad NTFS partitions. Seems pretty simple to put CHKDSK on some bootable platform without having to boot into the Recovery Console.
It is hard for me to believe that there is no utility to fix bad NTFS partitions. Seems pretty simple to put CHKDSK on some bootable platform without having to boot into the Recovery Console.
>>Seems pretty simple to put CHKDSK on some bootable platform without having to boot into the Recovery Console.<<
In fact this seems not to be that simple. Otherwise I guess we would be loaded with these kind of tools.
Check the disk for errors
Maxtor/Quantum (Fireball) http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/products/index.htm
Western Digital http://support.wdc.com/download/
Samsung http://www.samsungelectronics.com/hdd/support/utilities/utilities_index.html
Seagate http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/index.html
IBM/Hitachi http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT
fujitsu/Siemens http://www.fcpa.fujitsu.com/download/hard-drives/#diagnostic
In fact this seems not to be that simple. Otherwise I guess we would be loaded with these kind of tools.
Check the disk for errors
Maxtor/Quantum (Fireball) http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/products/index.htm
Western Digital http://support.wdc.com/download/
Samsung http://www.samsungelectronics.com/hdd/support/utilities/utilities_index.html
Seagate http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/index.html
IBM/Hitachi http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT
fujitsu/Siemens http://www.fcpa.fujitsu.com/download/hard-drives/#diagnostic
ASKER
Already did that. These are all WD drives and they are all clean according to their utility. This is definitely a software problem with NTFS. Guess I will be putting all my backups on FAT32 drives from now on. Do you think I would get better response if I had them move this to the Windows XP category?
ASKER
I was finally able to restore the files I needed by "mounting" the Drive Image image files. This is done through the Backup Image Browser. Once I did that, Drive Image was able to restore the large files I needed. After moving the data back and forth between drives and partitions, I was finally able to restore my drives to the original configuration.
Hmm, I missed your forlast comment... sorry 'bout that.
At least it seems like your problem is solved ;-)
LucF
At least it seems like your problem is solved ;-)
LucF
No problem ;-)
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How do you mean you can't boot into recovery console?
Have you tried booting from your windows cd-rom instead of trying to boot into recovery console from the harddisk?
Greetings,
LucF