Unallocated Partition

R

r-486

Gawd
Joined
Nov 9, 2006
Messages
556
I have two HDDs. The primary one holds Windows XP Pro along with programs and such. The second one is mainly for storage, that is, music, documents, etc. I had a 30GB partition at the end of the second HDD reserved for SUSE 10.1. I installed it and ran the OS fine and dandy. I then decided to get rid of it. I used Gparted 0.3.1-1 and somehow unallocated the entire second hard drive. I am now unable to boot into Windows.

I get the following error when trying to boot:

GRUB Loading stage 1.5.

GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 22

I'm currently running Knoppix 5.01 on a DVD. I can access the data on my primary HDD fine, but when trying to access the other secondary one it says “Could not mount device, it cannot determine the filesystem type and none was specified.”

I would like to be able to boot into an OS and somehow retain all my data on the second HDD.
 
Word one; Backups. This is an excellent experience to learn from.

What I would try first is to pop the winxp CD in there, boot into restore mode and run fixmbr/fixboot and see if that gets you back into windows.

The bad news is the data on your second drive will be hard to recover. Given that it sounds like you blasted away the partition table, I'm not entirely sure how to go about getting the files back, maybe someone here can give you some insight. However, a lesson to learn from this; Never much about with OSes on a harddrive that has real data. You are asking for problems. And backup your stuff frequently. If you want to play with different OSes, go download vmware server. It's free.
 
I've ran the "fixmbr" command; it got rid of the GRUB error. The "fixboot" command didn't do anything. Nevertheless, I'm still unable to boot into Windows. For some reason, I get two options for XP Pro to boot. I always had for some reason even before I installed Linux. My second HDD was originally formatted in NTFS for the storage files.

Selecting the first option ends up showing me a light blue screen with a white mouse cursor and that's it. It appears as if it freezes.

Selecting the second OS option displays the following:

--
Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem.

Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware.

Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.
--

Originally before I installed Linux, only the second option would work. The first one said something about an "ntldr is missing" error. I think it said that because I couldn't boot into the second HDD since their was no OS originally installed on it.

I'm open for some more suggestions.
 
I'll probably try a repair install as well, but I'm a bit paranoid.

I do have another HDD, but I need to buy a SATA cable because unfortunately my motherboard, DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D, only came with two. I'll do that tomorrow after classes. I'll install XP on the new HDD and backup the data off my primary drive. After that I suppose I'll try the repair install via the OS disc.
 
If you actually managed to wipe the partition table on the second disk (fdisk shows the entire disk as unallocated), you can try gpart, which scans the disk to see if it finds anything that looks like a partition boundary, optionally writing a corresponding partition table . Worked for me one time I had an accident with the solaris installer.
 
I added another HDD and installed Windows on it and was able to use the OS, but when I restarted my computer I was unable to boot into Windows. I receive the same message as before and now I get three options for Windows XP Pro:

--
Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem.

Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware.

Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.
--

I also tried the "chkdsk /r" command in the recovery console but no results.

I tried the bootcfg utility in the recovery console to correct the boot.ini file file but the operation failed. I used the command "bootcfg /rebuild" along the load identifier labeled "Windows XP Professional".

Would I be able to access my second HDD's files if I changed the filesystem from unallocated to NTFS or FAT. I can't see any of the files for the second HDD in Knoppix, because it's unmountable.
 
"fdisk -l" yields the following results:

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

Disk /dev/sdb: 74.3 GB, 74355769344 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9039 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 2129 17101161 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 2130 9038 55496542+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 2130 4258 17101161 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb6 4259 6387 17101161 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb7 6388 8516 17101161 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb8 8517 9038 4192933+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdc: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 30401 244196001 7 HPFS/NTFS
 
root@4[~]# gpart /dev/sda

Begin scan...

It never appears to finish scanning.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
root@5[~]# gpart /dev/sdb

Begin scan...
Possible partition(Windows NT/W2K FS), size(16700mb), offset(0mb)
Possible extended partition at offset(16700mb)
Possible partition(Windows NT/W2K FS), size(16700mb), offset(16700mb)
Possible partition(Windows NT/W2K FS), size(16700mb), offset(33400mb)
Possible partition(Windows NT/W2K FS), size(16700mb), offset(50101mb)
Possible partition(Windows NT/W2K FS), size(4094mb), offset(66801mb)
End scan.

Checking partitions...
Partition(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX): primary
Partition(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX): logical
Partition(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX): logical
Partition(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX): logical
Partition(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX): logical
Ok.

Guessed primary partition table:
Primary partition(1)
type: 007(0x07)(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX)
size: 16700mb #s(34202320) s(63-34202382)
chs: (0/1/1)-(1023/254/63)d (0/1/1)-(2128/254/61)r

Primary partition(2)
type: 015(0x0F)(Extended DOS, LBA)
size: 54195mb #s(110993085) s(34202385-145195469)
chs: (1023/254/63)-(1023/254/63)d (2129/0/1)-(9037/254/63)r

Primary partition(3)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
chs: (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r

Primary partition(4)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
chs: (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
root@5[~]# gpart /dev/sdc

Begin scan...
Possible partition(Windows NT/W2K FS), size(238472mb), offset(0mb)
End scan.

Checking partitions...
Partition(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX): primary
Ok.

Guessed primary partition table:
Primary partition(1)
type: 007(0x07)(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX)
size: 238472mb #s(488392000) s(63-488392062)
chs: (0/1/1)-(1023/254/63)d (0/1/1)-(30400/254/61)r

Primary partition(2)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
chs: (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r

Primary partition(3)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
chs: (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r

Primary partition(4)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(0-0)
chs: (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)r
 
sda is the secondary drive with most of my data.
sdb is the primary drive.
sdc is the new drive I just installed.
 
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