Hard Drive Failure - BOOTEX.LOG is only file

I awoke this morning to my desktop having the "blue screen of death". In this case it was the UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME error.

I have tried several different things, but have been unable to get into my hard drive at all.

Last step I took was following directions elsewhere on these forums to install Puppy Linux. Did that, but when I opened up my HD the only file inside of it was BOOTEX.LOG

Uh oh...

I'm just trying to find a way to see my old files so that I can back them to a USB drive.

Please send help! Thanks...

I can't comment on linux matters...I don't do linux.

The typical cure effort for unmountable boot volume errors...is to run the chkdsk /r command.

Did you try that? If so, what were the results of that effort?

Louis

I was told it had one or more unrecoverable errors. I can try again but I think now that my PC thinks the drive is empty... I am guessing it won't do me much good. :-)

"One or more unrecoverable errors" means that chkdsk ran into either a file system error/damage...or hard drive damage...that it could not overcome in its effort to "fix" the Windows file system.

If the file system goes bad...files/partitions tend to become incapable of being read by Windows...files may "disappear" from the perspective of Windows.

I suggest you await some advice from some of our linux-users...on what you might try as a recovery effort.

Might possibly be a decent reference, http://help.artaro.eu/index.php/data-recovery/recover-files-from-hard-disk.html .

Louis

Hi Flyingpickle

I might be able to help you determine what's going on with that hard drive.

First some questions

Manufacturer/Model of the computer and of the hard drive(if you know it)?

Did anything unusual happen prior to this like a power failure or some malware problems or other errors?

Were you running chkdsk on it when it initially blue screened or did you do that afterward?

In the meantime, try not to do anything else with the disk until we get a better look at it.

James

"One or more unrecoverable errors" means that chkdsk ran into either a file system error/damage...or hard drive damage...that it could not overcome in its effort to "fix" the Windows file system.

If the file system goes bad...files/partitions tend to become incapable of being read by Windows...files may "disappear" from the perspective of Windows.

I suggest you await some advice from some of our linux-users...on what you might try as a recovery effort.

Might possibly be a decent reference, http://help.artaro.eu/index.php/data-recovery/recover-files-from-hard-disk.html .

Louis

Ya, I used that Puppy Linux in order to see that SATA drive with only the BOOTEX.LOG file in there.

I think the problem was that somewhere along the way of trying to use a Recover disk, the Master Boot Record got changed or something. Does that even make sense? Is that a thing? :-) And is there a way to "fix" it? Sorry, I have worked as a web developer for a dozen years now, but when it comes to hardware/OS issues, I'm still a noob.

Thanks.

Hi Flyingpickle

I might be able to help you determine what's going on with that hard drive.

First some questions

Manufacturer/Model of the computer and of the hard drive(if you know it)?

Did anything unusual happen prior to this like a power failure or some malware problems or other errors?

Were you running chkdsk on it when it initially blue screened or did you do that afterward?

In the meantime, try not to do anything else with the disk until we get a better look at it.

James

Thanks James!

PC is a DELL Dimension E510, purchased May 2006.

HD is a Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 160 GB.

Ya, I don't know that anything happened. I had the PC on overnight, which I often do. Woke up this morning, went to the PC, and the blue screen was up reading "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME". I tried to reboot a few times with no luck. Tried to boot up in safe mode - same errors coming up.

So... I got a Windows Recovery bootup CD burned. But chkdsk was yielding the "one or more unrecoverable error" messages.

I used the Kapersky Rescue Disk and I saw that it scanned every file on the C: drive, which made me feel good that at least it saw files still on there! Scan finished and found like 2 malware files in Java which got deleted.

Then I went back to trying to use chkdsk but still had the same errors as before.

Here's where I think I screwed up. I think I inadvertently run something from command prompt that changed the master boot record. Does that make sense? Is there a way to do that? So I probably did it in a desperate attempt to get the damned thing working, because I'm impatient like that! :-)

Anyhow, the next thing I did was the Puppy Linux method, which enabled me to open up that HD but, alas, the ONLY file in there now is BOOTEX.LOG

I feel stupid, because I'll bet if I hadn't changed the MBR, I probably could've seen all my files in there with Puppy Linux and successfully transferred everything over to an external drive.

So... now I'm hoping/praying that there's a way to fix the MBR so that I can see my files on there still. I have to imagine they're on there still. I don't think the drive got "wiped clean" or anything. It's just a matter of being able to get to them. I'm not even necessarily trying to "fix" the disk to make it usable again. Just more interested in being able to get my files off of it so that I can move on.

Thinking a new PC is probably in the works anyhow...

Thanks again for your help.

Hi

Thanks for the answers. There's a couple of ways we can go on this one so I need to know...

Do you have an external drive that we can recover files to (has enough free space on it) or even another internal drive (I know those e510's are pretty easy to add and remove drives in).
or
Do you want to pull the drive and put it in another computer and work on it in there?

Either way is fine with me. We will probably work off another boot CD very similar to the Puppy one.

The first thing you can do for me to get the ball rolling is to boot it into Puppy again and go into the Terminal (on my older version of Puppy, it is an icon on the desktop called CONSOLE if you don't see it let me know.)
and type
fdisk -l
and press enter (that is fdisk SPACE DASH l as in Linux).
I'd like to see the result of that if you can connect to the internet and post it, great. If not a clear picture with your cel phone or camera is fine.

Then shut it down. The main thing is that we do not want to do anything that writes to the disk at this point so don't save your Puppy session, just shut it down.

James

Thanks James. These replies were going to my Spam folder so I didn't know you had replied already. I will get back to you on this one later today. I appreciate your help.

Being that this is a dell computer, have you tried diagnostics to test the hard drive?

Turn on computer and start hitting the F12 Key when you see the Dell Logo
Once you get the menu options, depending on your Bios version find something that says either Hard Drive Diagnostics or just Diagnostics
Once you run the diagnostics let us know if you got a Pass or Failed and what the error is..

Thanks James. These replies were going to my Spam folder so I didn't know you had replied already. I will get back to you on this one later today. I appreciate your help.

No problem, let me know if you have any difficulty getting that info I asked for. There are other ways to get it but since you already have Puppy and know how to boot to it, this is probably the easiest way for now

James

Hi James. I have plenty of external drive space available to copy over to.

Here are the results of fdisk -l



# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19452 cylinders, total 312500000 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x69737369

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 ? 1869771365 2038460886 84344761 69 Unknown
/dev/sda2 ? 1701519481 3571400945 934940732+ 73 Unknown
/dev/sda3 ? 2573 2573 0 74 Unknown
/dev/sda4 0 3435113471 1717556736 0 Empty

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Considering that you started with "Sorry. I'm a Linux noob. I have no idea how to send you the results of "fdisk -l" from the Console window. Isn't there some way to just copy and paste the text in here?" .... you have done a good job figuring it out so quickly! Well done!

Edited to add: Just a note for you ...
When you reply, unless there is a particular need/wish to quote from a previous post, use the "Add Reply" button so that you don't unnecessarily quote the whole previous post.
Good luck! You are in excellent hands with James: I am watching with interest as always when James is on the job ...

Hi FlyingPickle

Good job that's what I wanted to see.

We're going to need to make another boot CD that is also free and has the tools that we need to repair this kind of problem. It also has the tool to tell us if there is any physical damage to the disk that we need to know about before going further. These tools do all of this without making things worse

Download the PartedMagic ISO for your computer (you probably need the one labeled "Most people will only need this file") ask me if you aren't sure.


Instructions for making a Boot CD
If you don't already have CD Writing software, download and install Infrarecorder
and place a blank CD in your CD writer then run Infrarecorder
Click WRITE IMAGE
Navigate to the PartedMagic ISO that you downloaded and click the OPEN button
Click the OK button and it should burn your CD. When it is done it will automatically eject the CD and you can close Infrarecorder, you can now use this CD to boot your computer.

Instructions For Booting From The CD
Boot from the newly made CD like you did from the Puppy CD. If you have any difficulty or questions, let me know and I'll help.

When you boot the computer that has the bad drive connected to it with the PartedMagic CD that you made a menu will pop up, please select
1. Default Settings (Runs from RAM)

When it finishes booting you will notice that it looks kind of like a Windows desktop.

Check SMART status of drive
After PartedMagic loads, double-click the Disk Health icon on the desktop and then double-click the icon for your hard drive. Click on the PERFORM TESTS tab.
Make sure that the Test Type is set to Short Self-Test and click the EXECUTE button
I will need to know if it passed or not.
Next click the ERROR LOG tab and let me know if there are any entries and if there are let me know what the rows say.
Next select the ATTRIBUTES tab and let me know what the raw values are for the ID's listed there.

In your reply I need to see...

• Did it pass the Short Self-Test?
• Any entries in the Error Log
• The Attributes list (at least the RAW VALUES for ID's 1, 5 and 197 if you have to type them by hand in your reply)

There are more detailed instructions with pictures here (you can skip the fdisk part since you did that already with Puppy)

If you have any questions/problems, let me know.

The next tool we use will depend on the disk health results.
James

Hi James.

1. Did it pass the Short Self-Test?
A: No, it did not. Test result reads "Completed with read failure"

2. Any entries in the Error Log
A:

Complete error log:

SMART Error Log Version: 1
Warning: ATA error count 65535 inconsistent with error log pointer 2
ATA Error Count: 65535 (device log contains only the most recent five errors)
CR = Command Register [HEX]
FR = Features Register [HEX]
SC = Sector Count Register [HEX]
SN = Sector Number Register [HEX]
CL = Cylinder Low Register [HEX]
CH = Cylinder High Register [HEX]
DH = Device/Head Register [HEX]
DC = Device Command Register [HEX]
ER = Error register [HEX]
ST = Status register [HEX]
Powered_Up_Time is measured from power on, and printed as
DDd+hh:mm:SS.sss where DD=days, hh=hours, mm=minutes,
SS=sec, and sss=millisec. It "wraps" after 49.710 days.

Error 65535 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 37021 hours (1542 days + 13 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.

After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
-- -- -- -- -- -- --
40 51 00 da 63 8c e0 Error: UNC at LBA = 0x008c63da = 9200602

Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ---------------- --------------------
29 00 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:00:51.576 READ MULTIPLE EXT
29 00 08 cf 63 8c e0 00 00:00:51.575 READ MULTIPLE EXT
29 00 08 c7 63 8c e0 00 00:00:51.573 READ MULTIPLE EXT
29 00 08 bf 63 8c e0 00 00:00:51.572 READ MULTIPLE EXT
29 00 08 b7 63 8c e0 00 00:00:51.571 READ MULTIPLE EXT

Error 65534 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 37021 hours (1542 days + 13 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.

After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
-- -- -- -- -- -- --
40 51 00 da 63 8c e0 Error: UNC at LBA = 0x008c63da = 9200602

Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ---------------- --------------------
25 d8 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:00:50.543 READ DMA EXT
25 d8 08 cf 63 8c e0 00 00:00:50.543 READ DMA EXT
25 d8 08 c7 63 8c e0 00 00:00:50.543 READ DMA EXT
25 d8 08 bf 63 8c e0 00 00:00:50.543 READ DMA EXT
25 d8 08 b7 63 8c e0 00 00:00:50.543 READ DMA EXT

Error 65533 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 37021 hours (1542 days + 13 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.

After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
-- -- -- -- -- -- --
40 51 00 da 63 8c e0 Error: UNC at LBA = 0x008c63da = 9200602

Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ---------------- --------------------
25 03 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:07:14.927 READ DMA EXT
25 03 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:07:14.926 READ DMA EXT
25 03 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:07:14.925 READ DMA EXT
25 03 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:07:14.924 READ DMA EXT
25 03 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:07:14.923 READ DMA EXT

Error 65532 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 37021 hours (1542 days + 13 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.

After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
-- -- -- -- -- -- --
40 51 00 da 63 8c e0 Error: UNC at LBA = 0x008c63da = 9200602

Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ---------------- --------------------
25 03 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:07:14.927 READ DMA EXT
25 03 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:07:14.926 READ DMA EXT
25 03 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:07:14.925 READ DMA EXT
25 03 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:07:14.924 READ DMA EXT
25 03 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:07:14.923 READ DMA EXT

Error 65531 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 37021 hours (1542 days + 13 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.

After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
-- -- -- -- -- -- --
40 51 00 da 63 8c e0 Error: UNC at LBA = 0x008c63da = 9200602

Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ---------------- --------------------
25 03 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:07:14.927 READ DMA EXT
25 03 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:07:14.926 READ DMA EXT
25 03 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:07:14.925 READ DMA EXT
25 03 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:07:14.924 READ DMA EXT
25 03 08 d7 63 8c e0 00 00:07:14.923 READ DMA EXT


3. The Attributes list (at least the RAW VALUES for ID's 1, 5 and 197 if you have to type them by hand in your reply)
A:

ID: 1, Raw Value: 229497694
ID: 3, Raw Value: 0
ID: 4, Raw Value: 897
ID: 5, Raw Value: 24
ID: 7, Raw Value: 783610934
ID: 9, Raw Value: 37025
ID: 10, Raw Value: 0
ID: 12, Raw Value: 892
ID: 194, Raw Value: 18 (0 10 0 0 0)
ID: 195, Raw Value: 229497694
ID: 197, Raw Value: 1254
ID: 198, Raw Value: 1254
ID: 199, Raw Value: 0
ID: 200, Raw Value: 0
ID: 202, Raw Value: 2

Thanks again.