straynor
asked on
Lost disk signature
Hi,
Dell PE2450
Dell PERC 3/Si controller
Seagate Cheetah ST336607LC SCSI U320 HDD (hotswap job)
WINNT 4 SBS (ARGH!)
We have (had?) the above server in a branch office, and it has just died. Further inspection reveals the boot drive has failed, and the system will no longer boot. All data (files/exchange .edbs) are stored on a separate disk that had no problems.
No problem with that, not bothered about the system as i can reinstall it, but the data is obviously vitally important. Booted into KNOPPIX linux from CD, it mounted up the remaining scsi drive (data disk) and allowed me to view the files no problem.
For vairous reasons (lack of knowledge of linux, and my inability to mount a 250GB USB HDD in knoppix), I took the disk out and put it into another server with the same drive caddys, running windows 2000 svr. Disk was detected fine by scsi/raid card, and windows 2000 svr recognised the disk fine.
Problem is, like an idiot, I hit the dreaded 'Yes' button on the 'Write Signature to new disk?" popup. I now have a disk with 35GB of data on it (i hope!), but it shows up as 'unallocated' in windows 2000, and now the PERC controller in the original server doesn't recognise the volume on the disk (presumably as the config has been overwritten by the win2k disk signature).
Short of sending the disk off and paying for professional DR, is there any way I can get the disk working again (in any operating system!) so i can copy the data off? When I plug it into the PERC card on original server, the PERC card boots and says 'no volumes detected'. PERC utilities recognise the disk, and gives me the options of formatting or initialising.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Straynor
Dell PE2450
Dell PERC 3/Si controller
Seagate Cheetah ST336607LC SCSI U320 HDD (hotswap job)
WINNT 4 SBS (ARGH!)
We have (had?) the above server in a branch office, and it has just died. Further inspection reveals the boot drive has failed, and the system will no longer boot. All data (files/exchange .edbs) are stored on a separate disk that had no problems.
No problem with that, not bothered about the system as i can reinstall it, but the data is obviously vitally important. Booted into KNOPPIX linux from CD, it mounted up the remaining scsi drive (data disk) and allowed me to view the files no problem.
For vairous reasons (lack of knowledge of linux, and my inability to mount a 250GB USB HDD in knoppix), I took the disk out and put it into another server with the same drive caddys, running windows 2000 svr. Disk was detected fine by scsi/raid card, and windows 2000 svr recognised the disk fine.
Problem is, like an idiot, I hit the dreaded 'Yes' button on the 'Write Signature to new disk?" popup. I now have a disk with 35GB of data on it (i hope!), but it shows up as 'unallocated' in windows 2000, and now the PERC controller in the original server doesn't recognise the volume on the disk (presumably as the config has been overwritten by the win2k disk signature).
Short of sending the disk off and paying for professional DR, is there any way I can get the disk working again (in any operating system!) so i can copy the data off? When I plug it into the PERC card on original server, the PERC card boots and says 'no volumes detected'. PERC utilities recognise the disk, and gives me the options of formatting or initialising.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Straynor
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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Seen this one and got bit by it.
Here is your problem:
NT4 is running NTFS 4 and when you attached it to a W2K box it wrote the NTFS 5 signature to it.(and converted it to dynamic)
This is a bad thing .
You could try this:
http://faq.arstechnica.com/link.php?i=1806
But is does seem strange that the W2K box doesn't see it any more(after all it did do the conversion).
I did this at one point and the W2K still saw it ,but when I booted it up it would cause data corruption that wouldn't get fixed because it complained the the version of chkdsk was incompatible.
You could also try Captian Nemo and see it that works.
www.runtime.org
Here is your problem:
NT4 is running NTFS 4 and when you attached it to a W2K box it wrote the NTFS 5 signature to it.(and converted it to dynamic)
This is a bad thing .
You could try this:
http://faq.arstechnica.com/link.php?i=1806
But is does seem strange that the W2K box doesn't see it any more(after all it did do the conversion).
I did this at one point and the W2K still saw it ,but when I booted it up it would cause data corruption that wouldn't get fixed because it complained the the version of chkdsk was incompatible.
You could also try Captian Nemo and see it that works.
www.runtime.org
ASKER
Thanks for the replies, i tried getdataback and it has worked a treat! My bacon is saved!
All the best!
Straynor.
All the best!
Straynor.
GetDataBack
http://www.runtime.org/
The demo version is free and will tell you what files it can recover. You pay for full functionality. Highly recommended.