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Data recovery, help appreciated.

Started by hellokevin11, 2009.07.16, 08:21:47

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hellokevin11

I'd like to say greetings, new to the forum. I hope
my new status won't put you off, as I have a
big problem..

I'm trying to recover os/2 hpfs data off some 1gb drives.
I'm using nt 4.0 (pinball reg patched) with ontrack recovery.

One drive showed up in nt4.0 thanks to the pinball patch.

The other drives don't show up, and in disk admin it tells me it
sees them but no partition.

1. Is there any way in os/2 or NT to recover a dropped hpfs partition?
2. Is there a windows program that can do this?
3. If not, can I do it from ecomstation RC?

Forgive my lack of knowledge, I've been doing research for some hours
and it doesn't help that most people have never heard of hpfs let alone
done recoveries from a dropped partition.

Many thanks for your kind insight.

ivan

First welcome.

Now to your problem.  First stop trying to use windows to see HPFS drives, you are more likely to create more problems than you solve.

I am trying to visualise what you have there.  By '1 GB drives' do you mean separate physical hard disks or do you mean partitions on one physical drive?  If it is the former then how are they set up - on one computer or several? If the latter then put the the HD in an OS/2 machine, run chkdsk and see what you can read from the partitions.  If you can't read the partitions then get a copy of DFSee from hobbes and try that, but I must warn you it has a rather steep learning curve.

Answers to your questions:
1.  OS/2 yes, NT no.
2.  DFSee for windows but you need a fair amount of technical knowledge to use it.
3.  Yes, with care.

Give us a clearer picture of what you have and are trying to do and we can give you a more focused answer.

IBManners

Hi Kevin,

You might also like to let us know were you are located, ie, country/city. There maybe someone near you that can help out.

For example I do data recovery and transfer, mostly free for the needy. Anything from RX50 disks's, Digital Equipment Corp RU units, tape's, HD's, optical drives, optical-mag drives, all sorts of wierd floppy disk types and formats though I can nolonger do 8" FD's. All the way to modern HD's etc.   AIX, OS/2, Windows, DOS, POS, ULTRIX.

Cheers
Ian Manners
I am the computer, it is me.

Pete

Hi

Moight be worth having a look at the drives/partitions involved using a tool such as DFSee - www.dfsee.com - which works with many operating systems and file systems or from a bootable CD.

Regards

Pete


RobertM

Hi Kevin,

I am in NY (near NYC) and am also willing to help if you are nearby. If all else fails (for instance, it's a physical issue with the drives, such as a failed controller or drive mechanics) and the data is that important to you, you may wish to try DriveSavers, who does understand HPFS partitions.

If you suspect it is not a hardware issue, there are some great suggestions below.

-Rob


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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hellokevin11

#5
Thank you for so many replies.

The drives are just over 1Gb. Quantum Fireball 1080 SCSI drives.
Hooked to the scsi card, I got an immediate error about the >1 GB
setting in the card. I stopped encountering problems when I set the
SCSI card to pre 1gb compatibility.

I'm quite good with software, the problem is the hardware on hand seems to be beyond what os/2 was meant for. I looked to ecomstation, but it would not install. I later had the same problem with linux, and it was the 8gb limit of the mainboard. I set the HDD jumper to compat and it worked in linux. I didn't try
ecomstation yet.

P3 450mhz, 768mb ram, 80gb maxtor, 6gb hitachi, cd-rom, floppy, pcmcia controller, scsi card.

I tried to install ecomstation to a 6gb drive, no luck. The Cd never made it past the bootup,
the error was always the one relating to the 2gb limit. I tried partitioning it for 2gb and still no go,
hence the NT 4.0 solution.

If I try to recover in windows, I get files but they are useless as easyrecovery strips the file of location
making them useless. A huge folder of mashed up files is useless to me.

I will put another 6gb in and try to install ecomstation.

The data on the drives is unreleased or beta games for Sega Saturn, if I don't recover the files
this data will be lost... So far it's survived since 1996 in a cardboard box. No bad drives either.
they sure don't make them like they used to!

Saijin_Naib

Oh my god. Saturn games? What games? Sonic X? I love my Saturn and my Dreamcast!

ivan

Kevin, it looks as if your problem with eCS is the SCSI card and OS/2 should install on that specification hardware without problems, in fact I have a box here almost the same spec - less the SCSI card.

That being said there might be another possibility to get your files.  I have found PCLinuxOS 2009 Gnome live CD can read HPFS disks.  Assuming it has the driver for your SCSI card then you might be able to copy from the HPSF drives to another larger drive formatted as FAT32.

hellokevin11

Many thanks Ivan. The problem is the partitions were dropped on the drives.

I'm going to look at dfsee in the meantime.

How does one go about data recovery in os/2?

Is dfsee the go-to app?

ivan

By 'dropped' I assume you mean left with the dirty flag set - as in when the machine was switched off with out shutting down the OS.  If that is the case then DFSee has the ability to reset the dirty bit check the disk and clone it to another new disk - among a lot of other options.

My usual way of recovering data using OS/2 is to either use a USB converter - plug the drive into that and then it into an OS/2 machine, this prevents problems with primary partitions a boot time - or, if I know there are only logical partitions then I use a removable drive caddy.  Either way the drive becomes accessible to the OS and can then be worked on - chkdsk /f first which usually fixes the dirty flag od DFSee for deeper problems.

Radek

Hearing about SCSI - is the OS/2 SCSI driver able to manipulate your HD? AFAIK, the OS/2 native drivers are a bit archaic, so unless Dani driver is able to manage your SCSI drive (without need of .add drivers), your problem might start here.

If you are sure that the partitions on your HD is okay and that the problem consists in OS/2 not being able to manage them then try PING (Partition isn't Ghost). PING is a Linux partiton archiver/restorer which understands HPFS partitions and which can backup them even using network. There is a bootable ISO of PING so that you need not to install anything on your machines. PING bzips the image and archives only used sectors so that the image is much smaller than the size of the partition.

hellokevin11

If I hook it up in my xp cd, I get files off the drive when attempting recovery.

ontrack drops the files into folders by type, nice but not what I need.

In Nt4.0 with pinball, they don't show at all. One did, and I got the files off it.
Recovery returned the same files for each drive:
*.bdr 1gb
*.pcx 40mb
and a few others. The same drive returned files in raw mode in xp recovery.

I have to install ecomstation and try recovery from there, as many know it's
not so easy to install due to hardware. I might buy a microdrive to ide adapter.
$7.00 off ebay.

I'd like to try what I can in the os before I lay out $65 for DFsee.

The scsi card I use is very old, so it should find it. Even NT 3.51 found it, so it
should not be a problem.

Once again, thanks for all the help, I hope to have good news.

As to the content, this is the company they came from.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sculptured_Software

ivan

Radek, the Dani drivers have NOTHING to do with SCSI drives and I mean NOTHING!

All SCSI drives are handled by the SCSI card driver if a driver does not match the card then nothing will be seen of anything attached to the card.

Your idea of using PING would be good if the partitions were marked 'clean' - however it appears they are marked 'dirty'  so the problem will just be transferred somewhere else.

Kevin,  You can try DFSee for free and if it does what you want then pay for it.  The version available from the DFSee web site and hobbes is nit restricted in function only in time of use which is usually a month or so.  If you want Jan to help you then you will need to pay. 

Radek

Okay, I've never had SCSI drivers in my comps  :) As far as DFSee is concerned, the free "try period" is, IIRC, 21 days. During the try period, DFSee is fully fuctional. Therefore, download DFSee, 21 days should be enough.

Saijin_Naib

DFSEE also makes "smart" images that only use the compressed sectors, just so you know/ I've used it to transfer drives before.