[SOLVED] Win7 recover corrupted RAID 0 with Vista instalation

Discussion in 'Windows 7' started by sameguy, Sep 28, 2011.

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  1. sameguy

    sameguy MDL Novice

    Sep 28, 2011
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    I had Vista installed on C drive (which is RAID-0 600Gb partition) and decided to create another partition for Win7 installation using Acronis disk director, it restarted and continued to create new partition in the windows preload stage, however I was impatient and turned off my computer after about 1 hour of waiting. That was huge mistake. I cannot boot my Vista again on the C drive. Later I installed Win7 on another hard disk in the same computer and was trying to fix the old Vista installation but no luck so far.

    Currently when I log in to Win 7 and open My Computer I can see the old C disk with Vista (now renamed to D) but if I try to open it the error message appears "D:\ is not accessible" :mad: However some partition managers can browse the old files on D and with Paragon Hard Disk manager I can export all files where I want. So it means that files should be ok after failed partition creation. I managed to load Vista (after using startup recovery option) into black screen with arrow but no task manager and other response. Is there any way to fix the partition and boot Vista again?

    Format is not the option because there are important files and I don't have the space in other drives to transfer 300+Gb worth of data. Also there are no backups created.

    Any help would be welcome.
     
  2. 100

    100 MDL Expert

    May 17, 2011
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    Sounds to me like the partitioning program was moving around data on the disk in order to make room for another partition. And yes, that can take a very long time.
    You can boot from the Windows DVD and try to run chkdsk, but I'm not sure if it will be able to fix it.

    Best advice really though is to get another drive you can copy your important files on to now, and not try repairing a broken partition and perhaps totally ruining your data in in the process.

    See, that's something you just don't do with data on a RAID-0. Just a single failed drive will kill your entire array.
    But at least you won't make that mistake next time ;)
     
  3. sameguy

    sameguy MDL Novice

    Sep 28, 2011
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    I will try to find another HDD for files recovery. But I'm pretty confident that C disk is not lost because as "100" said partitioning program was just moving around data and when I turned it off it was just stuck on the last 99% mark on "moving files part" for some time. If anything was lost it could be only several files.

    As you can see in image below the D (previous C) disk is shown as healthy and even the free space 44% is shown correctly so it means Acronis disk director hasn't created new partition, hovewer for some reason the disk is innacessible by Windows explorer. I can select error checking from Disk management tool but it shows error: "Windows can't check the disk while its in use" (I don't know what this means) but if I click Force a dismount button and continue to scan at the end it says no problems was found.


    vista.jpg
    I will still try to recover the Vista installation (with my files copied to another disk) using different scenarios:
    1) I could try to copy all files from original corrupted partition to the new drive, then disconnect RAID partition and try to load vista from new disk.
    2) Since Vista is still loading black screen with cursor maybe I can try to locate what's missing from loading fully (but I don't know how)
    3) Is there a program that fixes bad partitions like this? It's strange that all partition managers I installed show no errors with this RAID disk
    What else can I try? :confused:
     
  4. sameguy

    sameguy MDL Novice

    Sep 28, 2011
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    Finally, I managed to recover Vista installation:biggrin: The problem was with files permissions. After partition creation failure all files seemed to belong to no one. That's why Win7 on D didn't show C disk in My Computer. Using icacls command I restored permissions to all the files in C drive and Vista booted just fine.

    In the process had to buy new 2Tb HDD, but it wasn't necessary as it turned out. Luckily this time everything was ok, but the lesson is never mess with RAID1 partition without a backup. :)