Date: Sun, 05 Mar 2006 13:46:30 -0500 From: Gerard Seibert <gerard@seibercom.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Help with lost MBR on USB HDD Message-ID: <20060305134300.75D1.GERARD@seibercom.net> In-Reply-To: <000001c64058$9d5179a0$040ba8c0@HAPLO> References: <20060304204805.8460116A460@hub.freebsd.org> <000001c64058$9d5179a0$040ba8c0@HAPLO>
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Jarrod O'Flaherty wrote: > Hi All, > > I have a dual boot system going with WinXP and FreeBSD on my laptop. > Just before I installed FreeBSD I bought a USB HDD to plug in so I could > transfer some files off my laptop's internal HDD and make space for it. > > Alas, even with doing that I could only get a measly 7 GB free, which I > used up pretty quickly building the JRE for OpenOffice. When I got my > USB HDD I split it into 4 x 60GB slices (partitions), changing one of > them from the default NTFS to FAT32, so I could share it with FreeBSD. > > While the sharing was ok, unfortunately FAT32 doesn't support symlinks > and this led to errors when I tried to use that slice for building stuff > in ports. > > I decided I needed a native UFS2 slice instead of a FAT32 one and set to > work. > > Firstly, I have "Acronis PartitionExpert Personal" and according to > that, all the slices apparently existed (past tense!) in a single > logical partition. I used the program to change my *THIRD* slice > (between 120GB and 180GB) from existing in the logical partition to > being a physical partition in its own right. Was this a bad move, not > being at the end of the disk? Acronis never complained and it all seemed > to work ok. > > I then proceeded to try to change its type from 7 (NTFS) to 165 > (FreeBSD). Acronis said it needed to reboot to do this, you know that > odd, special WinXP (safe?) mode? When it did so though it said my drive > was not present. Was this because the USB drivers aren't loaded in that > odd WinXP pseudo-DOS "blocky character" mode? Or was this because I had > my USB drive on auto power-off and it took too long to windup? > > Anyway, whichever it may be, PartitionExpert said that it couldn't find > the drive so it couldn't change the type. > > I then thought well surely if I can't do it under XP then I can do this > under FreeBSD. I looked at the MBR under fdisk and it had 2 entries, one > for the logical partition and one for the new physical partition I had > setup with PartExp. > > I must admit I was more comfortable with the fdisk in sysinstall, since > I had used that when installing FreeBSD, so I changed to that one. The > display seemed a little odd because it had about 8 entries, my four 60 > GB slices, plus four other very small slices between each 60GB slice. A > couple were "63" in size, but the one just above the partition I wanted > to change (da0s2) was "7" in size. I wrote down the lines around the > partition I wanted to change, but didn't write the whole table out as it > was rather long winded. Aerrr, bummer! > > Anyway, I changed the Type from 7 to 165. And that's ALL I did. I then > Wrote the table out and exited. I went into the labelling tool (also in > sysinstall) and set the slice as one big FreeBSD partition. The > labelling tool automatically newfs'ed it for me, and things were good to > go. > > Next I exited sysinstall and mounted my partition under FreeBSD. > Everything was great. > > Past tense. > > When I next booted into WinXP a few minutes later, all my NTFS drives > were gone. A quick look under Acronis told me only my FreeBSD slice > remained. > > Ummm, so what had gone wrong? Any ideas? > > I went back into FreeBSD and had a look at the MBR under fdisk (the > command line version this time) and now there was no entry 1, just an > entry 2, pointing to the FreeBSD slice. So I had lost my 3 other slices, > from 0 - 60 GB (NTFS), 60 - 120 GB (NTFS), and 180 GB - end_of_disk > (FAT32). > > Can anyone please tell me what happened when I ran sysinstall's fdisk? > Can anyone also perhaps tell me where the slice (partition) info is kept > for a logical partition? Since the MBR only had 1 entry for the other 3 > partitions their info is obviously not stored there. Where and how is it > stored? > > And last but not least, I really hope someone can tell me how I can > salvage my MBR & other 3 partitions. If that is not possible, then > perhaps you can point me in the direction of a tool which will salvage > the files on the lost slices? There's not heaps of data there, only > around 20 GB or so across all three. But if I can, I'd really like to > get it back. I'm hoping NTFS is robust enough to allow salvaging like > this? > > Any and all help GREATLY appreciated!! > > Thankyou, > Jarrod. I know you do not want to hear this, but why on earth did you attempt to mess with the HD without a full backup in place first? I am not sure if you can recover the lost data. If not, this would be a good time to wipe the disk clean and partition it to your liking. I believe that you will have to install Windows before installing FreeBSD. Good Luck! -- Gerard
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