ADD 11 Shows partitions correctly AND entire drive as unallocated
Hello,
I have a two drive system as follows:
Disk0 250GB
C: 50GB for winXP
D: 50GB for win7
E: 33GB Data
F: 100GB Data
Disk1 250GB
G: 10GB Swap
H: 111GB OS-Programs Backup
I: 111GB Data Backup
Partitions were all created using Partition Magic 8.0. All partitions work correctly. I noticed PM 8 showing disk0 as 1 large BAD partition, but it worked. Windows disk management reports all are healthy.
I removed PM 8 and downloaded and installed ADD 11 trial and it shows all partitions on Disk0 correctly, but it ALSO shows the whole drive as unallocated 233GB as follows
Disk0 250GB
C: 50GB for winXP
D: 50GB for win7
Unallocated 233GB
E: 33GB Data
F: 100GB Data
Disk 1 shows up fine
Anyone have any idea why it would do this?
Mark:
I have attached the images, but I am connected remotely now so I cannot get an image of the disk management screen in Windows 7 only XP since I have not setup a remote connection for Win7 yet.
akguy36:
That's unusual. Partition Magic usually sets up the partition table in accordance with the "rules" followed by Windows XP, and XP Disk Management seems to have no problem interpreting the layout. However, your prior statement that PM shows Disk 0 as having one large "bad" partition probably means that there is some anomaly in the partition table.
Could you add one more picture to the equation? In ADD 11, right-click on the Disk 1 icon or the words "Disk 1" in the list and choose "Edit", then when the disk editor opens select "As partition table" from the View menu. Make the window large enough to see all four entries in the partition table and all columns. Post the graphic image of the partition table to your next reply.
Mark,
Thank you very much for attempting to assist me with this. Disk1 partition table image is attached.
akguy36:
I think that there is an error in your partition table that apparently PM was detecting but XP Disk Management isn't seeing, and ADD 11 reacts to the error by incorrectly displaying the partition layout.
If you look at the first partition, it starts at sector 63 and has a size of 104,872,257 sectors. Therefore, partition 1 ends at sector 104,872,320.
Partition 2 starts at sector 104,871,936, or in other words, it starts 384 sectors before the end of partition 1 and thus overlaps partition 1 by 384 sectors. This isn't good - if you ever fill up partition 1 it will overwrite some of the data in partition 2.
Do you have True Image (TI) also? If you do I would recommend making an image of your disk and then restoring each partition, one at a time, back to the disk. TI will make new partition table entries as it restores each partition and it should do them correctly. This is probably the simplest way to fix this.
One further question - how was partition 2 created? Was it done with PM or with the Windows 7 install CD?
I would be interested if anyone else concurs with what I see.
Mark,
I do have True Image 8.0. Just so I am clear, if I image the disk now wont they restore with all the partitions in place? How can I restore "one at a time" I am very new to True Image and ADD.
All partitions were created by PM 8 two years ago or so
Thanks
Mark,
I just ran a quick test with DD in Windows 7 and it does the same thing. The entire drive's size (40GB in my test) is shown as Unallocated space (located just after the overlapping partition).
Paul:
But to be clear, in your test did you have overlapping partitions or a normal layout? Do you agree that the first and second partitions on akguy36's disk are indeed overlapping?
Mark,
I created a standard "correct" layout and then edited the partition table to overlap the first two partitions.
---
The sectors definately overlap. Of course, I have no idea which partition is correct. Possibly, you could tell by looking for the partition's last sector. If it exists for the first partition and it's before the start of the second partition, you may be able to edit the partition table and correct it. In any case, create a backup first.
akguy36:
I took another look at your partition table and have concluded that the second partition is the source of the problem. It has a starting sector of 104,871,936. If this partition was created by PartitionMagic then its starting sector would have been a multiple of 63. Instead, it is a multiple of 2048, which is a dead giveaway that the partition was created by the Windows 7 installer. Apparently the installer made an error when creating the partition, starting it before the end of the first partition. However, it did end the Win7 partition at the beginning of your extended partition container at sector 209,728,575, avoiding overlap at the end of the partition.
Before recommending any course of action to fix this, I'd like to be sure that this is what happened. Can you do a couple more tests?
Let's pick on the first partition. The first sector of a Windows XP partition should look like this in the disk editor when viewed "As Hex":
Note the error message text that is highlighted in yellow. This sector is referred to as the Partition Boot Record, or PBR. It is duplicated at the end of the partition in the partition's last sector as a backup. The next picture is a view of the last sector of the first partition in my example from a VM running WinXP. In this example the WinXP partition starts at sector 63 and ends at sector 14,249,654:
Note that this last sector matches the first sector. Now, knowing what to look for can you find the last sector of the first partition on your disk? I would start in the location that the partititon table entry is indicating as the ending sector at sector number 104,872,320 and would also look back a few hundred sectors and forward by a few sectors.
The first sector of the Windows 7 partition may look similar but it will have different error message text (Bootmgr is missing instead of NTLDR is missing). According to the partition table this sector should be at 104,871,936.
If you can find the last sector of the first WinXP partition and the first sector of the Win7 partition, let me know where they're at. The fix may be as simple as editing the partition table or it may involve imaging one or more partitions then restoring them.
Mark,
Last night I attempted to image the drive so I could restore as you suggested but I kept getting errors when attempting the image (using TI 8) so I gave up and restored the drive from a back up that was a few months old. PM 8 and ADD 11 both have no problems now and all I have to do is update some software and I am back to normal.
Regarding your examples above, I did look at my restored drive and I do not see the NTLDR message in the XP partition. Both partitions are showing the BOOTMGR message. Is that a problem? Normally, when I start the computer I get a choice to boot to Windows 7 or an "earlier version of Windows" (XP in this case). After the restore, XP booted but Win7 would not and said I needed to repair. After repairing, the Win7 option read "Windows 7 (recovered)." Both boot now.
akguy36:
You are correct - in a dual boot system where WinXP was installed first and Win7 second, the installer puts the boot files in the active partition; in your case the active partition was the WinXP partition. It will then set up the dual-boot to be managed by the Windows 7 boot manager, so it changes the partition boot record in the first partition to boot to BOOTMGR instead of to NTLDR and booting of both operating systems is managed by the Windows 7 boot manager and its menu.
I've reported the ADD 11 graphic display issue to the Acronis developers in the MVP forums. I would suspect that they overlooked testing ADD 11 with malformed partition tables to see how it would react. It would be better if it detected overlapping partitions and reported this as an error instead of displaying an obviously incorrect disk layout.
Mark,
Thank you very much for your help. Your time on this was very much appreciated!