C-drive Recovery Disaster - QUESTIONS

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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
Beginner
Posts: 14
Comments: 5

Restored my C drive and my E drive was obliterated.  The details are as follows:

  • 1.5 TB WDC Green
  • C = 300 GB D = 600 GB E = 600 GB

I had earlier backed up my C drive partition to a tib file, apparently when my C drive was on a smaller partition. I had subsequently use Paragon Partition Manager to move the partition boundaries, to add space to C drive.

  • C = 400 GB D = 500 GB E = 600 GB

Anyway I now needed to restore my C drive.
To be safe I reformatted the C partition (to flag any bad sectors as "Bad") and then used the boot CD to restore from.
As expected, the final details of the Recovery job said the TIB file restore was for a 300 GB partition but allowed me to "restore to my now larger partition of 400 G.  Figuring I was fine, I selected the TIB file. The next screen had 2 options:

  • Use Acronis Universal Restore
  • Sector-by-sector   - (the  TIB file was a standard FULL Backup,  Not sure why this option is here since it is impossible to do based on my backup file structure)

The next step was "Drivers Manager" with checkboxes to restore my Drivers.
QUESTION 1)  I am doing a full boot drive partition restore so the drivers are all in the TIB file.  Why is there a "Drivers Restore" option ?
The next restore option is the biggie - it gave me 2 checkboxes:

  • NTFS C
  • MBR and Track 0

QUESTION 2)  if you do not check MBR and Track 0  -  will the drive be bootable ? I thought not - so I stupidly checked both boxes as I was worried if I did not check the partition table that it might not boot.

OK - so the C drive restored successfully - D drive was fine - but my E drive VANISHED !! I looked at it using multiple utilities and every one of them shows it as 600 GB of "File System Unknown" - with the Logical driver letter gone.
I tried to restore it using OnTrack Easy Recovery and Disk Internals - to no avail.
C drive was also unbootable (froze at the Windows Login screen) - but I was able to fix that using FIXMBR and FIXBOOT from the Windows Recovery option from my WinXP CD.

QUESTION 3)  what should I have done in my scenario ?  I am guessing that I should have left the MBR and Track 0 alone and just restored the partition.  But again I did not want an unbootable drive and have to reinstall WinXP.
Shouldn't there be a WARNING when youy click the MBR and Track 0 box ?  Something like, "CAUTION - make sure your drive partition parameters have not been altered - otherwise uncheck this Option". 

Sat, 07/31/2010 - 15:44
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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
Forum Member
Posts: 8
Comments: 61

Here's probably what happened, by selecting MBR/track 0 you put the old partition table (the one that existed at the time the backup was performed) back into sector 0. From what you wrote it would seem that the start sector of the E: partition didn't change from the old to new partition structure, but possibly it did. Were either D: or E: logical partitions, or are all primary? Can't say exactly how, but restoring the old partition table into sector 0 confused something so Windows can't recognize your E: partition any longer.

Anyway, for future reference the MBR and track 0 (sector 0) are not part of any partition, that's why they're in their own restoration domain. If you replace just the MBR, that's just the first 446 bytes and doesn't include the partition table (which starts immediately after the MBR). But track/sector 0 is the first 512 bytes, which includes the partition table. Unless you have a major problem booting your computer or want to do a multi-boot setup you should never have to mess with the MBR.

I would think that all the data is still accessible on your E: partition once you fix the partition table to recognize it, the problem is without knowing what your partition table looked like before the problem started its going to be hard to figure out how to fix it. There are many tools out there that claim to be able to find deleted partitions, etc. so I would think there is a tool available to fix your problem, I've just never had to do it so I can't point you towards one unfortunately. There are others on this forum who know more about this type of repair than I do, hopefully one of them can get your problem fixed. With the right tool it should be recoverable, so don't do anything to that part of the disk.

Tue, 08/03/2010 - 05:48