True Image Home 2009 lost 200GB of partitions
Hi,
Running XP pro/SP3
I installed True Image Home 2009 2 days ago. Registered OK and did a couple of backups to test it. Everything seems OK.
Today I tried in configure the Secure Zone without the boot manager option. Sorry about the vagueness.
The program identified a 95GB block of unallocated space AFTER the end of the extended partition on my second disk (320 GB disk).
When I proceeded, the progress bar and timer got to 2 seconds remaining then two messages popped up very briefly on the system tray. Yellow triangles. Both said 'windows delayed write failed' or something very similar. The first message referred, I think, to bootstat and saying it should be saved to another disk if possible (whatever that means).
The second message was different but referrred to harddisk2.
Then Acronis closed.
My Computer now shows only one logical partition in the extended partition of the drive.
The machine boots OK, but several large partitions (100GB) have disappeared.
HELP PLEASE
Mike
First thing is don't try to install any other programs or run a defragmentation program or delete anything that you can still see.
What is and does BootStat do? You might need to temporarily disable it.
1. Open up Disk Management - right click My Computer, choose Manage and then select disk management. Just check here to see if all that has happened is for the partition letters to have become unnassigned .
2. If possible make a complete disk image from the TI rescue CD.
3. Your problem might be solved just by remaking the MBR of your machine. You will need have an XP\Vista\W7 OS CD\DVD to do this.
4. If you don't have or able to borrow an OS installation media, then you could try downloading the Acronis MBR resetting program which is somewhere in the knowledge base - actually i think there is a link to it in the help file for TI2009.
DD10 would probably do the job for you as you can edit disk details, but the trial version won't commit changes so that'll be a bit pointless.
Bootstat.dat, I've found, is a file in the windows folder, a part of windows as far as I can see.
Disk management shows:
1) 8GB unallocated (which is correct)
2) Extended partition of about 290GB. This presumably includes the 95GB that Acronis was adding
3) 4GB logical NTFS partition (containing pagefile) at start of the extended partition
4) 286 GB free space (not unallocated)
I've found the original error messages in the event file:
1) Windows - Delayed Write Failed : Windows was unable to save all the data for the file \windows\bootstat.dat. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.
2) Windows - Delayed Write Failed : Windows was unable to save all the data for the file \Device\HarddiskVolume12. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.
There are other messages as well:
The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume . (doesn't say which
The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur.
Windows - Delayed Write Failed : Windows was unable to save all the data for the file \. The data has been lost.
I have my XP disk.
What is DD10?
DD10 is Acronis Disk Director 10.
OK, I found my copy of bootstat.dat a 2KB file.
So these are Windows error messages rather than TI ones, either your drive(s) are playing up or your PC had noisy power lines (look inside your PC for that fat capacitors (round cans with normally a gold vertical stripe or silver cans with a black half circle) and see if any of them are bulging at the top or have a brown sticky goo oozing from them. If you do these need to be replaced.
Anyhow, I would do two things.
1. Insert the XP CD and log onto the recovery console - you'll need to remember your Admin logon for this, then at the command prompt type in 'fixmbr' (without the quote marks).
Reboot and see if anything has changed.
2. Run chkdsk /r
Hi thanks for the help,
There is nothing bulging or sticky in view.
Before I do anything too dramatic I'm going to backup the non-faulty partitions to an external disk. True Image no longer loads as it destroyed the partition it was partly installed on!
Then I'm going to clone the entire erased 320GB drive to a brand new disk (using HDclone) and store the original safely.
This next info comes from a Partition Magic debug file created AFTER True Image did whatever it did. The lines with the asterisks show that the chain of info just stops. I just hope it hasn't erased or formatted the data as well.
============================================================================
Disk 1: 38913 Cylinders, 255 Heads, 63 Sectors/Track.
============================ Partition Tables ==============================
Partition -----Begin---- ------End----- Start Num
Sector # Boot Cyl Head Sect FS Cyl Head Sect Sect Sects
---------- - ---- ---- ---- ---- -- ---- ---- ---- ---------- ----------
0 1 80 [1021 0 1] 0F [1023 254 63] 16402365 608734980 [Large Drive Placeholders]
1021 0 1 38912 254 63 Actual Values
16402365 0 00 1021 1 1 07 [1023 254 63] 16402428 8193087 [Large Drive Placeholders]
1021 1 1 1530 254 63 Actual Values
16402365 1 00 [1023 0 1] 05 [1023 254 63] 56484540 81931500 [Large Drive Placeholders]
3516 0 1 8615 254 63 Actual Values
Warning: Logical drive chain points to sector without partition table. ********************
Disk[1], Part[56484540]: Warning: EPBR partition starting at 56484540 is without logical partition. ********************
===================================
Does you know if Disk Director Suite 10 ( the full version) would be able to re-create the mbr/partition info (or even edit it manually) given that I have the Partition Magic debug info shown in message #1 above which does seem pretty complete?