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Date:      Thu, 12 Dec 2002 18:50:12 -0600
From:      Stephen Hilton <nospam@hiltonbsd.com>
To:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   HD data recovery
Message-ID:  <20021212185012.1da5d0ef.nospam@hiltonbsd.com>

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When multi-boot system operators go bad :-)

Using my PC's bios I could select either IDE or SCSI as the 
boot device, so I could boot either FreeBSD/W2K with the 
FreeBSD bootmanager on the 1st SCSI drive, run the bios setup 
on reboot, and start Linux on the 1st IDE HD.

Had a problem with grub and RedHat 8's up2date on the 1st IDE 
disk messing with my 1st SCSI HD's boot record. It was trying 
to "automatically" update the Linux kernel and reconfigure 
grub, and lost its way. 

Booted to FreeBSD 4-STABLE via fixit floppy and did this :-\
(pre coffee)

# cd /boot
# dd bs=512 count=1 if=/dev/da0 of=mybootsect
# dd bs=512 count=1 if=mbr of=/dev/da0
# shutdown -r now

I seem to recall seeing something about my SCSI controller 
changing the mapping of the drive layout (Tekram DC390U2W) 
but cannot find that info now.

The drive is now unbootable, changed the drive id jumper to 1, 
installed a fresh FreeBSD system on a different SCSI disk at 
id 0 and then ran: 
# fdisk da1
this reported a clean disk, no partitions.

The munged HD is an 18 SCSI with 1st slice NTFS 4GB, 2nd slice 
FreeBSD 9GB, 3rd slice NTFS 5GB.

Most of the important data was backed up, but lost a bunch of
email and some other stuff, not to mention the time spent 
configuring and patching the W2K side of the disk. Modem only 
in my neighborhood, no broadband.

Any hope for recovery of this drive? I know the missing piece 
of information is "out there" in the 512 byte mybootsect file I 
created. Is it possible to use "forensic" tools to track that 
down and then copy it and write it back to the correct location?

Am up and running now on the spare HD, and can work on my "big 
mistake" at my lesiure, thanks in advance.


Regards,

Stephen Hilton
nospam@hiltonbsd.com

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