[Mikael Gunneras]

I did a couple of really stupid moves and I'm in need of some help.

I'll not go further into that...so here's the problem.

I've wrecked my windows partition by letting Symantec ImageCenter make an automatic change....message similar to the following.

"Symantec ImageCenter has detected an error 116 on the partition starting at sector xxxxxx on disk 1.
The starting LBA value is xxxxxx and the CHS value is xxxxxx.
The LBA and the CHS values must be equal.
Symantec ImageCenter has verified that the LBA is correct and can fix the CHS value.
Would you like Symantec Image Center to fix this error?"

Stupidly and rashly I let it do the change.

Windows of course doesn't boot and maybe even more stupdily I let windows startup repair run hoping it could restore the CHS value. It did verify there was an error in the partition table and tried to correct it....which did not work either.

My question is how deep in the s*** is the situation.
Is it "Try to save what can be saved" and reformat and start over...or is there any hope of restoring the disk.

At the moment all I can see is a 100MB partition on this 1000GB disk.

Grateful for answers/ideas....

 

[Networks]

Re: In need of assistance with samsung HD103SJ 1000GB

your in deep it depends on how important the data on the drive is do you have another 1tb drive around to image this drive to as a safety net ? before we go making even more changes to it and going deeper down the rabbit hole ?

 

[Mikael Gunneras]

Re: In need of assistance with samsung HD103SJ 1000GB

Thanks Networks,

I would definitely prefer to not loose the data.
I'll make an image to another 1TB drive and post again when it's done. Might take a day or two. I'll post again when it's ready and hope (fingers crossed) it will be possible to retrieve the data.

 

[Networks]

Re: In need of assistance with samsung HD103SJ 1000GB

sounds like a plan. what are you going to image it with ?

 

[Mikael Gunneras]

Re: In need of assistance with samsung HD103SJ 1000GB

I'd be happy to take your suggestion...I was planning on using R-drive image myself.

 

[Networks]

Re: In need of assistance with samsung HD103SJ 1000GB

I use FTK imager its free as well as Easeus (link in my sig) R-Studio has it built in and you can use the free trial just in case you need to buy it later for the recovery no need to buy r-drive image as well

 

[fzabkar]

Re: In need of assistance with samsung HD103SJ 1000GB

@Mikael, yours is the kind of problem that should normally be easily fixable by hand (unless Microsoft's brain dead disc utilities have compounded the damage).

IMHO I would avoid throwing all sorts of data recovery software at the problem without first examining the damage with a disc editor. The changes will have been written to sector 0. To undo these changes would require editing at most 16 bytes.

Firstly, you could try Partition Find and Mount:
Partition Find and Mount — free partition recovery software

This will mount any partitions that it finds, but it will not make any changes to your disc, unless you tell it to.

If you can see your file system, IMHO the best approach would then be to manually edit sector 0. Otherwise Partition Find and Mount does have an option to restore the partition table. However, since two disc utilities have already made a mess of the partition table, I would be reluctant to allow a third to have a go.

If you could upload sector 0 of your physical drive (not logical drive), I would be prepared to help you with a manual repair.

Roadkil's Sector Editor:
Roadkil.Net - Roadkil's Sector Editor Program Download

HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor:
HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor | mh-nexus

DMDE (DM Disk Editor and Data Recovery):
Download DMDE Free Edition - DMDE (DM Disk Editor and Data Recovery Software)

 

[Mikael Gunneras]

Re: In need of assistance with samsung HD103SJ 1000GB

That's sounds fantastic
Thanks a lot! I'll get crackin' on the sector 0 upload.
I'll be back shortly...

 

[Mikael Gunneras]

Re: In need of assistance with samsung HD103SJ 1000GB

I've made an export of sector 0 using Roadkil's Sector Editor.
Attaching it to this post.
Thanks again for helping

 

[Mikael Gunneras]

Re: In need of assistance with samsung HD103SJ 1000GB

It seems the upload wasn't accepted...trying again.
Renamed the file ending from .bin to .txt which should work better.
Also put a jpg screen dump from Roadkil's sector editor...

 

[fzabkar]

Re: In need of assistance with samsung HD103SJ 1000GB

@Mikael, your screenshot is showing the NTFS boot sector of the first partition. That's logical sector 0 of the first logical drive, not physical sector 0. In fact it corresponds to physical sector 2048. You need to show us physical sector 0.

That said, the information in the boot sector is telling us that this NTFS volume begins at sector 2048 (= 0x0800) and has a size of 204799 (= 0x031FFF) sectors. The number of heads is 255 and the number of sectors per track is 63.

You can use Google's calculator to help with the hexadecimal arithmetic:
0x031FFF in decimal - Google Search

The problem is that Roadkil is telling us that the volume's size is 209631 (= 0x0332DF) sectors. This number is significantly larger and probably means that the partition table entry is incorrect. In fact the entry in the partition table should be larger by 1, ie 0x032000.

 

[Mikael Gunneras]

Re: In need of assistance with samsung HD103SJ 1000GB

Hi Again!

Tried using the DMDE tool instead...setting it to using hex mode and physical sectors under editor. This is a snapshot of the sector 0 I got from this. Hope this time it's right.

 

[fzabkar]

Re: In need of assistance with samsung HD103SJ 1000GB

Your partition table shows two partitions. These are located at offsets 0x1BE - 0x1DD.

The first partition begins at sector 0x800 and has a size of 0x332E0 sectors. This means that it ends at sector 0x33ADF (= 0x800 + 0x332E0 - 1).

The second partition begins at sector 0x32800 and has a size of 0x746D3800 sectors.

0x746D3800 x 512 bytes = 931.4 gigabytes

0x746D3800 x 512 bytes in gigabytes - Google Search

Therefore the problem appears to be that the first partition extends into the space allotted for the second partition. We need to correct the first entry in the partition table by editing the size to reflect that which is reported in the NTFS boot sector, namely 0x32000.

To do this, you first need to switch DMDE to edit mode by selecting Edit -> Edit Mode.

Then go to the line beginning with "00000001c0" and change "E0 32 03" to "00 20 03".

Then select Edit -> Write Changes.

You should now reboot to ensure that Windows re-examines your drive's file systems.

 

[Mikael Gunneras]

Re: In need of assistance with samsung HD103SJ 1000GB

Fantastic That worked miracles...everything is back up and running.
I owe you a great debt of gratitude.
It's truly inspirational with people as yourself with deep knowhow and mastery in their field.
Thank you again
Let me know if I can do anything for you in my field....audio engineering and music production.
Marking this thread as solved....