HD Crash - Can't Mount Partitions and need HELP!

[mgr600]

I am running 5.1 from a bootable CD and am completely new to this. I have spent hours researching this website and have tried various suggestions. I am now desperate and decided to post. I greatly appreciate all help.

I can no longer boot up windows XP Pro. I am getting the common disk read error. After booting up Knoppix, I have attempted to mount the hda1 partition unsuccessfully. A gpart -v /dev/hda1 provides the following information:

dev(/dev/hda1) mss(512) chs(155055/16/63) #s(156295440) size(76316mb)
Primary partition(1)
type: 114(0x72)(UNKNOWN)
size: 831050mb #s(1701990410) s(218129509-1920119918)
chs: (368/111/45)-(371/101/51)d (216398/5/11)-(1904880/13/60)r
hex: 63 6F 6D 70 72 65 73 73 65 64 00 0D 0A 50 72 65

Primary partition(2)
type: 116(0x74)(UNKNOWN)
size: 265612mb #s(543974724) s(729050177-1273024900)
chs: (67/115/32)-(299/114/44)d (723264/1/3)-(1262921/8/29)r
hex: 73 73 20 43 74 72 6C 2B 41 6C 74 2B 44 65 6C 20

Primary partition(3)
type: 101(0x65)(Novell Netware 3.xx)
size: 0mb #s(0) s(168653938-168653937)
chs: (114/111/32)-(353/115/52)d (167315/6/41)-(167315/6/40)r
hex: 74 6F 20 72 65 73 74 61 72 74 0D 0A 00 00 00 00

Primary partition(4)
type: 000(0x00)(unused)
size: 25mb #s(51635) s(2692939776-2692991410)
chs: (0/0/0)-(0/0/0)d (2671567/3/52)-(2671618/7/26)r
hex: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 83 A0 B3 C9 00 00

From reading other posts I saw the inconsistencies of the partition sectors not ending in 63. I executed sudo cfdisk /dev/hda. The results displayed one partition (hda1) with the following C,H,S - 9729,255,63. I honestly don't know where to go from here. My ultimate goal is to recover some files from my hard drive. Once again, thanks for your time and help.

[TopFarmer]

The partition types listed for partitions 1 & 2 or not normal at all. Need more info.
Do you have a third party program loaded into the MBR ? ie: boot/partition manager , (DDO) disk drive overlay, Nortons GoBack program or any similar program ?

The start and stop adddress of partitions are also totally wrong.

When you ran gpart , did you write the partiton data to the hdd ?
Try to run TESTDISK , (on some Knoppix's cd's it will not run and gives an error doing loading).

What was the last things you did in XP , leading to the problem ?
Size of hdd ? Make/Model of comp ?

[mgr600]

Thanks for the quick response!

I have an 80GB western digital HD. I do not have any 3rd party programs loaded. I did not partition the drive and did a standard XP Pro install. My confusion starts with the gpart information. I don't understand the information provided on partition 1 and 2. When doing a sudo cfsidk /dev/hda, it lists only partition 1 and 80GB. Don't know if this helps you any?

I did not do a gpart -w since the information seemed incorrect from the gpart -v. When running testdisk, I get the following error:
knoppix@Knoppix:~$ testdisk
testdisk: error while loading shared libraries: libntfs.so.9: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

The problem started when I had an unsuccessful bootup in XP. After shutdown, when I re-started I began receiving the disk read error message. I used the windows XP CD with the attempt of recovery. The only suggestion from windows was to re-format the partition. I have a Dell Dimension 8250 desktop.

I have a question:
When doing any commands like mount, gpart or fdisk,... should I execute against /dev/hda or /dev/hda1? When executing against /dev/hda, I get a permission denied error. The gpart information in my first post was executed against /dev/hda1. The sudo cfdisk command was successful against /dev/hda. Sorry for the very ignorant question but I'm trying to learn this.

My desktop in Knoppix displays hda1 only. When attempting to mount, I get errors. Thanks again for your help. I greatly appreciate it!

[mgr600]

Here is more information and may be more helpful:

I executed su and then did a gpart /dev/hda. Here are the results:

root@Knoppix:/ramdisk/home/knoppix# gpart /dev/hda

Begin scan...
Possible partition(Windows NT/W2K FS), size(76316mb), offset(0mb)

* Warning: short read near sector(156301299), 64512 bytes instead of 66048. Skip
ping...
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: 76316mb #s(156296320) s(63-156296382)
chs: (0/1/1)-(1023/15/63)d (0/1/1)-(155055/14/61)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

Does the gpart information look good enough to do a gpart -w?
Thanks

[TopFarmer]

You would run fdisk, cdisk, gpart on the hard disk drive (hda) , but for mount would be for the partition (hda1).

Just to let you know, I have limited usage with linux and have never use gpart.

What info did cdisk or fdisk give ?

The output from gpart does look ok. Not sure about the sector ending with 63 when XP partitions the drive, it will leave some unpartitioned space at end of disk for some reason (from what I have read ).

If you have a MS XP cd you should get into the recovery console and run 'chkdsk'.
At this time you do NOT what it to fix any errors.
If chkdsk reports no error run chkdsk -p for more indepth check.
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/recovery_console_overview.mspx?mfr=true

If chkdsk reports only a couple of errors go ahead and run chkdsk -r , to repair. If there are may errors chkdsk -r will likey make a total mess, could be the partition info is wrong.

You can get a DOS version of testdisk. Do not know if gpart will correct errors in the VBR (volume boot record) but testdisk will if the option is selected.