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Partition Work DESTROYED all my partitions! Is fix possible?

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2014 1:34 pm
by Ambertus
Okay, I'm running 64-bit Windows 7 Pro SP1, and the system had 2 non-system 2TB hard disks attached. When I tried booting up, BIBM warned of "errors" and advised me to run "Partition Work" to examine and repair the problems, so I did just that.

It reported the message "*Errors Exist*" (arguably one of the most unhelpful error message in the known universe :roll: ) on one particular drive: A model Seagate ST2000DM001­-1CH1, which was MBR formatted with approximately 8 partitions, some of which were NTFS and others were of a rare type that are essentially treated as "raw" partitions (although they're properly setup in the MBR).

The letter "E", which indicates the problem areas, was shown next to the MBR and also next to the final partition on the disk, which was a normal NTFS volume. When I selected that partition for repair, I don't recall exactly which button I pressed, but the option I chose was something like Correct or Reconfigure CHS/xxx. Then I rebooted, and during that next startup, NO error message appeared.

However, after I finished booting into Windows 7, Windows Disk Manager and EVERY other similar tool I own reported that all of a sudden there were NO partitions on the disk whatsoever! :x It showed the disk as completely unformatted!

To make matters VASTLY worse, I've learned that there are exactly ZERO partition recovery tools out there which can properly locate and create an MBR entry for ANY of those rare, but fully legal and proper, partitions of the type that disk once possessed! I've searched for months and months in the last year and tried dozens of them, but I promise you that there are NONE WHATSOEVER that will work! :cry:

So my only, desperate hope is that, somehow, if I go back into BIBM's Partition Work, I can "unfix" what I did and get the MBR and ALL my partition back. Is there ANY way to do that? Any at all?

Pretty please? :?:

Re: Partition Work DESTROYED all my partitions! Is fix possi

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2014 2:47 pm
by TeraByte Support(PP)
Was BIBM run regularly on this system, previously without any errors being reported on that drive (for example, used as boot manager)? If so, were any changes made to the disk or partitions outside of BIBM?

What type of disk does BIBM show it as (MBR or EMBR)? If it's EMBR it could be that there are no partitions loaded into the MBR (BIBM would still show the EMBR partitions). See: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=517

Otherwise, does the disk also show as all free space (totally unallocated) in BIBM? Does Undelete in BIBM find anything?

Do you know what partition type the partitions were? Were they encrypted?

Re: Partition Work DESTROYED all my partitions! Is fix possible?

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2014 11:44 pm
by TeraByte Support
it doesn't delete partitions or change them unless you specifically ask it
to. If it found errors it reports it. The 'E' probably relate to
overlapping partitions. This can be because at some point in the past you
created an EMBR using BING or BIBM and then just stopped using it without
uninstalling or converting to the drive to use a MBR, so the EMBR would
still be there with the partitions that existed at that time, if you used
some other tool to repartition, it would cause the MBR and EMBR to be out of
sync. When you boot back to BIBM, it will add the new ones and keep the
old ones, so now you have to manually delete the ones that don't belong.
You'd have to use a combination of looking at the properties and the
start/end lba as well as any warnings and information about the file system
type. You can also use edit file to look around. Delete the ones that
don't belong (don't use any of the clear or wipe options when deleting).
Once clean, you can change the disk type to MBR. If it was already MBR,
then you had bad partition or volume layout.


"Ambertus" wrote in message news:8860@public.bootitbm...

Okay, I'm running 64-bit Windows 7 Pro SP1, and the system had 2 non-system
2TB hard disks attached. When I tried booting up, BIBM warned of "errors"
and advised me to run "Partition Work" to examine and repair the problems,
so I did just that.

It reported the message "*Errors Exist*" (arguably one of the most unhelpful
error message in the known universe

![:roll:]({SMILIES_PATH}/icon_rolleyes.gif)

) on one particular drive: A model Seagate ST2000DM001?-1CH1, which was MBR
formatted with approximately 8 partitions, some of which were NTFS and
others were of a rare type that are essentially treated as "raw" partitions
(although they're properly setup in the MBR).

The letter "E", which indicates the problem areas, was shown next to the MBR
and also next to the final partition on the disk, which was a normal NTFS
volume. When I selected that partition for repair, I don't recall exactly
which button I pressed, but the option I chose was something like Correct or
Reconfigure CHS/xxx. Then I rebooted, and during that next startup, NO error
message appeared.

However, after I finished booting into Windows 7, Windows Disk Manager and
EVERY other similar tool I own reported that all of a sudden there were NO
partitions on the disk whatsoever!

![:x]({SMILIES_PATH}/icon_mad.gif)

It showed the disk as completely unformatted!

To make matters VASTLY worse, I've learned that there are exactly ZERO
partition recovery tools out there which can properly locate and create an
MBR entry for ANY of those rare, but fully legal and proper, partitions of
the type that disk once possessed! I've searched for months and months in
the last year and tried dozens of them, but I promise you that there are
NONE WHATSOEVER that will work!

![:cry:]({SMILIES_PATH}/icon_cry.gif)

So my only, desperate hope is that, somehow, if I go back into BIBM's
Partition Work, I can "unfix" what I did and get the MBR and ALL my
partition back. Is there ANY way to do that? Any at all?

Pretty please?

![:?:]({SMILIES_PATH}/icon_question.gif)



Re: Partition Work DESTROYED all my partitions! Is fix possi

Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2014 6:39 am
by Ambertus
This reply addresses both of the helpful replies from Terabyte Support, for which I am truly grateful.

Before I continue, I wish to apologize for the considerable delay in responding! :oops:

Ever since my a while before posting my OP, I've been driven to distraction by the rather bizarre hard drive-related symptoms I was experiencing from my relatively new (9-month old) home-built desktop computer (I always build my own, and have been doing so successfully for decades now). The mobo is a newer, good-quality ASUS Z87-A.

But this isn't the right place to go on an on about these problems, so I'll cut to the chase. It is likely that the problem I reported in my OP was a result of these flaky problems with my mobo/system, so I shouldn't have focused on BootIt BM. Therefore, no further replies to this thread are necessary.

On the other hand, as a result of my frustration with my ASUS Z87-A mobo, I went ahead and bought a brand new mobo, an ASUS Z97-A. The tragic news is, I'm still seeing the very same kind of problems even with the new board! AARGH! :evil: One logical conclusion might be that the fault lies in the drives themselves, but that seems unlikely since almost all of them work perfectly in my considerably older system! Oh, well, this isn't a Terabyte issue either, so I'll end this thread now.

(I am about to start a new thread on a different issue, however, so I'm not quite done yet)

In closing, I wish to thank Terabyte Support for their helpful replies.