Harddisk access problems: Need HELP !!!

[Roland]

Dear all,

sorry for my dramatic header but I nearly got mad with my hard disks.
After I try to clone my hard disk (older IBM Travelstar, 12.5mm 60 GByte 5400rpm) for backup on an other 60GByte Travelstar hard disk from Hitachi (7k60) I can't access both of them anymore.
For cloning I use Norton Ghost 2005. During cloning one hard disk was of course in my A31p, the other one in a external USB 2.0 housing (from IBM). The cloning process took very long and finally stopped with a failure message (no response of the external unit etc.)
If I now try to start my TP it ask me for a password to access one of these hard drives. In the past I protect my TP with a master password which is the same for the hard drives inside. Now, this password works only for my TP but not for the hard drives anymore. After I type the master password the TP accept it for the machine and ask me then separately for the hard disk passwords and do not accept the one I have used all the time for the entire machine.

If I try to access the hard drives with any special tools (IBM drive fitness) or any FDISK tool these tools are able to detect the drives and show their details but it is impossible to erase the disks or create new partitions that I can use them again for a fresh install (I already gave up the idea to recover my data on these drives).

What went wrong during cloning with Norton Ghost 2005? Any experiences what could have happened? Anyone who can tell me how I can access these drives again to partition and format them new and make them accessible with my TP? Any smart DOS or Windows tool available?

Thank you for any comment,

[JHEM]

Roland mein freund,

I don't know what could have gone wrong during the cloning process, I don't use Ghost.

Have you tried just hitting Enter when prompted for the HD PW?

Regards,

James

[Guest]

Danke schoen James,

yes I tried that but that dosn't work...

[egibbs]

I may know what went wrong, but not how to recover from this point.

IBM drives use a 4 sector custom boot record, vs. 1 sector for most machines. If you Ghost an IBM drive without using the -IB switch it will only copy one sector and you will have an unbootable drive. This is all explained in document MIGR-57590 on the IBM support site.

The problem now is that other things have gone wrong as well, including a crash in the middle of cloning. That confuses thing a bit.

You could try SpinRite from www.grc.com, but if the drive is locked with an unknown password I doubt if it will work.

Sorry, wish I could be more help.

Ed Gibbs

[Roland]

Thank you, egibbs, I fear you are totally right that something went wrong when Norton Ghost copy the MBR of the drive. I think, this was the moment the cloning process stopped and report a failure message.
What is strange for me, that now both drives are not accessible anymore: the drive I clone to AND the original drive a copied from!

The link for grc.com does not work for me I will try to find the recommended SpinRite tool by google and post my results later.

BR,

Roland

[chermesh]

I tried to run spinrite on my T42, but the program gets stuck. I starts ok, rechecks viruses, and then blackens.
Were you more successful?
Do you have a suggestion how to deal with this problem?

Ran

[slagmi]

debug is worth a try-- you've got nothing to lose

I've done this sucessfully a hundred times or more. was useful in the day of the 'monkey' virus.

you'll need a bootable floppy or cd - something you can get to a DOS prompt with-

1. Insert the boot diskette and power on the system.
2. From the DOS prompt (A:\>, for example) type: DEBUG then press the [ENTER] key.
3. From the "-" prompt, type: A then press the [ENTER] key.
4. Type: MOV AX, 0301 then press the [ENTER] key.
5. Type: MOV BX, 0020 then press the [ENTER] key.
6. Type: MOV CX, 0001 then press the [ENTER] key.
7. Type: MOV DX, 0080 then press the [ENTER] key.
8. Type: INT 13 then press the [ENTER] key.
9. Press the [ENTER] key.
10. Type: G=100 10e then press the [ENTER] key.
11. The PC should be locked up and the hard drive LED light should remain lit. Or if that does not happen don't worry, just press q then [Enter] to quit debug.
12. Power off the computer for 5 to 10 seconds then power it back on.
13. All partitions should now be erased from ALL installed hard drives. If they still exist, you may want to try repeating the above procedure one more time.

[Roland]

Slagmi...

thank you a lot for this detailed and great guideline...but to be honest, I throw both of thew harddrives into the garbage bin and took it as a lesson about Synmantec software. I throw away all Norton Products I ever bought in my life and only use free-ware for all the jobs I need something similar.

However, I will save the debug guideline for the next time. Even in this forum we should think about to give such valuable information a special place (Bill, can you arrange a special section for such information?)

Again, thank you

Roland, Taipei
A21p & A31p (formerly 750c, 760c, 600e, 770e,)

[slagmi]

you're very welcome, Roland

if you threw those dead drives and ghost cd my way i'd throw some money back -lol

i'm still mulling over how that killed both drives. weird...

btw ed, thanks for the great tip on the ibm techdoc!

[jdhurst]

<snip> ..but to be honest, I throw both of thew harddrives into the garbage bin and took it as a lesson about Synmantec software. I throw away all Norton Products I ever bought in my life and only use free-ware for all the jobs I need something similar.
<snip>

Ghost is a relatively technical product that needs some detailed knowledge to be used. I license it for clients, but I let experts set it up, and I have never lost a hard drive to Ghost.

Their retail products are, at best, ok. They have to be thoughtfully set up or they are resource hogs. And they crap out from time to time for no reason.

Their commercial Symantec Client Security product is near best of breed from what I can see. Zero resource, totally silent, and stops everything bad in it tracks (not spyware of course).

So if you don't like Symantec, fine, but their products are not as bad as you paint them. And since they are software, I think I would have tried to retrieve the drives first. ... JD Hurst

[Roland]

Jdhurst,

no doubt about your statement but I am a private consumer and I've tried a lot to access the drives with several DOS tools (Hitachi's low level format and partitioning tools) at both of my TPs. I'am not a newbie in this and worked with computers more than 15 years now. I even bring these drives to a special service agency to make them accessible again without any success. "Real" IT specialist of our company (which use still "Drive Image" from Powerquest for client backups...) try also their luck and finally gave up.

The problem I faced is very special but should I really read first the entire failure database of Symantec (which is really pretty big, and believe me, I know this database already pretty good because this is the only direction the poor (consumer) customer service direct me to) prior to use any of their programs?

If I pay for something I expect something. If I get disappointed I explain the reasons. What do you think why Symantec bought Powerquest finally? You know the answer...

BR,

Roland, Taipei
A21p & A31p (formerly 750c, 760c, 600e, 770e)