NTFS Partition wh*ring

[Kurt]

PQPM 8.0 just messed up a 250GB HDD NTFS partition it was trying to resize to 60GB. After the resize operation should have finished, it ended with an "Error #19 - At end of something" message and my partition is borked.

Symantec has just bought Powerquest. Great. All Powerquest products are EOL. Great. Powerquest support is...gone. Great.

Windows XP can't repair the partition as it's in an unknown format - PTEDIT tells me it's NTFS alright.

Knoppix 3.7 can't mount the drive and Knoppix 3.8.1 gives a Kernel Panic message right when booting (on an a64 + A8N SLI NF4 PC).

I put the drive in an USB 2.0 case and do (shivers) a CHKDSK on a win2k PC. CHKDSK tells me the partition needs to be checked, deletes a few files, repairs the index and whatnot (I HAD of course done a backup of the important stuff before trusting the drive to CHKDSK...).

The partition is now BOOTABLE - woohoo I thought. NOT. I need to get the XP install moved to a SATA drive (nice new WD740). The 250GB is a Hitachi 7K250 ATA100 drive.

PQPM 8.0 can't move the partition as it says it has issues (anything from a file descriptor to lost clusters).

Luckily I can now mount the drive in Knoppix 3.7. I format the Raptor in FAT32 (stupid Knoppix never manages to find the NTFS files from my Windows CDs - so it can't write to them) and disable read-only mode (again another stupid bug is that I can't directly enable write mode from the drive properties but need to go through a little menu that will ask me if I really want to enable write - duh).

I copy all the files from the Hitachi to the Raptor. Fine. Get Knoppix out and reboot.

I then insert the Windows XP CD and try a repair of the installation. It will ask me where to install itself, tell me it's a FAT32 partition, ask if I want to format/convert it but won't offer the "repair the Windows installation" step (it DOES tell me that there's a windows folder on the partition and that it will eventually erase everyting in it if I choose to go ahead with converting the partition to NTFS or leave it as FAT32...).

In the meantime, without even looking at it, the NTFS partition on the Hitachi is again borked and the drive won't boot. Go figure.

HENCE...the questions are:
1/ is there a way I can recover the FAT32 installation of Windows and make it bootable again (I can't really think about a way right now)
2/ WTF could possibly be happening with the NTFS thingy (I tested the drive, RAM, system etc and all turned up perfect)?
3/ is there a WORKING distro Ã* la Knoppix that can cope with SATA+NF4 SLI+NTFS (read+write)? Be run from a USB key (drool)?

[schmosef]

I wish I could say something heplful here. I can comiserate though. PM used to be so kick ass. Then, from about version 5 and on, it just seemed like all these weird problems would crop up from time to time when doing a partition resize without any recourse to fix them.

I don't trust PM anymore. Sad.

[DirtFarmer]

I PM'ed you before I read through the entire post. Guess you managed to get things copied after all, I was going to suggest BartPe or a Partition Table Repair with PTD, sorry I got no suggestions as to how to fix your dilemma currently.

Hmmm, that was one useless post , sorry

[Chucky Cheese]

kurt,

...did you by any chance have the recovery console installed??? or have you tied to run it from the xp cd...make the raptor the "only" drive in the system?? there could be a sata/pata conflict. run the "fixmbr" tool at the command prompt, or type help.

good thing you backed everything up...i have witnessed easy recovery get data off a disk after being partitioned and formatted multiple times.

[Kurt]

Thx for the cheering up guys, I'm not desperate - just extermely annoyed

@Schmosef: the worst that's happened to them is getting bought by Symantec...(Veritas too...). PM all worked fine but it seems it might have an issue with either SATA or disks above a certain size. ERD doesn't work at all with SATA and I still haven't bothered to build a BartPE disk (although I said I was going to around v1.x ... )

@DirtFarmer: I'll have a look at PTD 3.0 when Monday comes.

@Chucky Cheese: I had removed the Hitachi from the system before trying to repair the FAT32 installation on the Raptor (there were 2 other 400GB drives in it but tehre doesn't seem to be a conflict). I'll try with on the Raptor. I skipped the fixmbr trick for some reason, but I'm not sure it will do much. I have actually copied all the files from one disk to another, haven't cloned it. I really only need to "sys" the drive, only I can't seem to remember how to do it for a Win XP installation (only thing I thought of was to try the repair from the original CD).

I'm just wondering how much I could trust a reconstructed partition table. Is NTFS robust enough to not loose bits of info through such a process?

Anyway, since I've got the important data off the drive (well, except for some savegames that I'll get later on), I'm looking at this from the clinical point of view. I need to build new tools that support SATA and other new chipsets and Knoppix is a total failure as is ERD 2002...

BartPE looks interesting but I don't feel like building all sorts of drivers for it, maybe I'll try ERD 2005 (even if it isn't that useful without all the other tools I need - maybe there's a way to run other programs on it...but I'm not sure how to do about the GUI).

UBCD4Win looks interesting but since I've never gotten to build a BartPE disk, I haven't tested this one either. I 'eve read ppl discouraging the use of it but I can't see why, they never said anything specific.

Come Monday I'll play around witht this some more, see if I can figure out why WXP won't repair the installation (or see it for that matter). Maybe there's hope in googling the MS KB...

[MultimediaMan]

BartPE: I've been using BartPE for about two years. It is definitely worth the trouble to create a CD. I make it point to update my installation files once a month. I demo'd it at work (using a Win2K3 image for creation), right after, I was asked to changed a few things (setup an .ini file setting up naming and making DHCP the default. It is good enough to use at work as a diagnostic/ installation tool for nearly any piece of hardware we use: up to and including large 4 way systems and Blade servers. The latest BartPE makes adding Device drivers (NICs and Disk Controllers) EXTREMELY simple. One warning: Windows Server2003 w/SP1 slipstream will not work currently. I expect we will see a build of BartPE that will work by Summer.

If you use the ERD Plugin, you should be able to recover nearly everything from the Raptor. You can have your cake and eat it too: BartPE gives you full network/NIC support as well as all of the features of ERD 2005.

UBCD4Win: This is basically a rip of BartPE (which is a very roundabout rip of WinPE). He changed the way drivers are installed and configured. For Windows XP Home-based build, it is a good tool, but I prefer BartPE.

Knoppix still has issues with NTFS, and always will until they start using the latest NTFS4linux builds.

ERD2005 is a great product, but it has issues with complex hardware configuration, high-end NICs in particular.

[Kurt]

So I guess I will have to get the time to build a BPE disk after all...

Is there a way to install a GUI on it for programs that would require it?

Right now I'm just leaving the NTFS drive alone until I can get my hands on PTD. I'll probably take the setup home as well...I haven't even had time to look at it yesterday.

[Kurt]

Now building...

It took me the best part of the day to find plugins for it. I must have 180 or sth...Most are useful but I'll sort through them later....did a cloning of the Hitachi drive too...I'll try a reinstall on that drive later on (just for fun - sort of).

Win2K it will be on the Raptor. I don't need XP and I'm fed up reactivating it for the (lemme count) 5 or 6th time! Buggers! It won't let me do it over the LAN of course...I'm starting to HATE MS Voice Activation line...

[Gurm]

Ok, you said PM 8.0 - is it really 8.0.0? Or 8.0.1? There's a GIGANTIC glitch in the way it handles NTFS partitions on XP SP1/SP2 that they didn't fix until 8.0.5 - you need to download a patch, install it, and then make a new boot disk to deal with the partition.

[Kurt]

A bit late in the game to figure it out...

From the "About" menu: PQPM 8.0 build 1242. So I guess I'm bound to find the update...

The partition is still borked but if I can avoid it on other machines...

Still trying to build a decent BartPE disk, the first one boots but is useless (where ARE all the plugins gone???) ... grrr

Now I need a Win XP PC to slipstream XP2 on a SP1a disk...grrr...MS "ù$^é"µ&é""

[Kurt]

XP is out 2000 is in.

Chkdsk would refuse to check the partition until I connected it to a win2k pc through a usb 2.0 adapter. got a bluescreen and chkdsk started an automatic recovery (on the clone hdd). fixed everything without as much as deleting stuff.

What I don't understand is that I just CAN'T boot from that drive. I did a repair with XP, the process finishes, I can access all the files, all the boot stuff is there, but it just won't boot.

In the end, I'm just formatting the drive with 2000 and all is well...whatever....