Data Recover Help -> Incorrect Partition Table

PhuckFonix · 05-23-2004, 07:42 PM

I used Partition Magic 8 to "correct" errors. It only made things worse. I wish to recover data from partitions on this drive I printed from fdisk. I think I had one or two fat32 partitions where I kept files( no OS on these paritions). These were probably logical in an extended partition. I'm not using Windows, I'm running Mandrake 10.0 Official right now.

Code:

fdisk /dev/hdb

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 39703.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: invalid flag 0xfffff5f6 of partition table 5 will be corrected by w(rite)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hdb: 20.4 GB, 20490559488 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 39703 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1               1        4161     2096923+  83  Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdb2   *        4161       28953    12495357    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdb3           28966       39675     5397840    7  HPFS/NTFS
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdb5   ?     4114657     3964273  2071690107   f6  Unknown

PhuckFonix · 05-24-2004, 07:01 PM

Guru?

homey · 05-24-2004, 08:25 PM

I don't claim to be a guru of any sorts but you may have some
luck booting up with Knoppix or similar and running a tool called
gpart . Might want to read up on it first.

J.W. · 05-25-2004, 01:00 AM

Well I'm no guru either but are you able to do anything at all with hdb? According your your fdisk listing you've got 3 primary partitions - hdb1, hdb2, hdb3, and a logical partition holding hd5 (hdb4 is the logical partition but will not be displayed) My recommendation would be to attempt to mount these partitions to a mountpoint and if that works, to then copy over as much data as possible.

If you provided more background info about the original problem you were attempting to fix, along with the steps you performed while using PM, that may lead to more responses. Good luck with it -- J.W.

kinasz · 05-25-2004, 07:55 AM

check out the partition-recovery HOWTO at www.tldp.org

note: I believe it said somewhere the worst thing you can do is use the drive

PhuckFonix · 05-25-2004, 09:21 PM

Code:

[root]# mount -t vfat /dev/hdb2 /mnt/hdb2
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdb2,
       or too many mounted file systems
       (aren't you trying to mount an extended partition,
       instead of some logical partition inside?)
[root]# mount -t vfat /dev/hdb3 /mnt/hdb3
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdb3,
       or too many mounted file systems
[root]# mount -t vfat /dev/hdb3 /mnt/hdb3
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdb3,
       or too many mounted file systems
[root]# mount -t ntfs /dev/hdb3 /mnt/hdb3
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdb3,
       or too many mounted file systems
[root]# mount -t vfat /dev/hdb5 /mnt/hdb5
mount: special device /dev/hdb5 does not exist

hdb1 has been okay.

The way it originally was was that hdb2 was supposed to the the ext'd, hdb3 a logical in there, and hdb5 _possibly_ free space in the ext'd. Partition Magic sure did a number.

Partition Magic prompted me to yes or no "fix" partition table(s) that were(was) "offset" or something. Parition Magic wouldn't boot in before or after that because it said there was a problem.

I found this in documentation:
"fixdisktable

Something was recently published on the <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org> mailing list about
a partition recovery program. I have not used this, nor examined it, nor read much about it
(except for the HTML page.) It may be useful to some of you if you have problems with
FIPS, Ranish Partition Manager/Utility or Partition Magic destroying your partition
information. You can find information on this partition-fixer named "fixdisktable" at
http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/fat32.html . It is quite a ways down in that page. Or
look for it via ftp in ftp://bmrc.berkeley.edu/pub/linux/rescue/ and locate the latest
"fixdisktable" in that ftp directory. (Source and binary dist should be available.) "
(http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Laptop-HOWTO-5.html)

I hope that this is it.

PhuckFonix · 05-25-2004, 09:53 PM

Code:

[root@ fixdisktable-0.3]# ls
ChangeLog      config.sub*  configure.in  fixdisktable.c  llseek.c     printsector.c
config.guess*  configure*   fat_io.h      install-sh*     Makefile.in  printtable.c

I am at this step, now what do I do?

PhuckFonix · 05-29-2004, 10:37 AM

I tried this:

Code:

[root@ fixdisktable-0.3]# ./install-sh
install:        no input file specified

and it didn't work.

Avatar · 05-30-2004, 10:12 PM

I have a similar problem as you. My linux partitions wont boot. But I have a FAT32 partition that use to be a D:\ drive (no OS).

I just took the drive out and slaved it in a WIN98 computer, the windows 98 could see the FAT32 partition and access the data no problem. (although the Linux partitions were invisible)