If you follow this blog regularly you may have noticed that I haven't posted in several days. The reason is because I had to deal with a major disaster; my main computer's hard drive crashed. To truly understand the magnitude of this disaster let me explain to you the importance of this computer. As stated, this is my main system where I do most of my work, keep track of financial data, house digital pictures of family and friends, have information for books I plan on writing as well as all of my work I've done over the years from my associates and bachelor's programs. We're talking a lot of data some of which had no hard copies. The more recent data housed in this system was for my current MBA program.
So I found myself in a bit of a pickle when this system crashed and the MBR was corrupted so bad that the XP recovery console couldn't fix it. I did begin backing up my data months prior to this unfortunate situation, but as with all backups if you're not backing up every second then there is a gap between the data you backed up and the new data you're creating until the next backup.
Sunday March 20th
I had the bright idea to free up space on my drive so I uninstalled games that I had installed onto the C drive and installed them this time onto another drive in my system. I tested each game and then it was back to business as usual. I played a game for a few hours then did a little work in an online class of mine. The system was working fine.
Monday March 21st
I was doing some work (probably planning a story for this blog) then knocked my magic jack (yeah, yeah I know) out of the USB port then put it back in and it started acting all weird so I killed the process then tried to start the application back up. It wouldn't start up so I left it alone. I rebooted the system threw on some music and played a couple of rounds in a game. As the bass was thundering from my music, the game crashes. I figured needed to take care of some business anyhow. I locked my system, ran some errands and took care of some other business. Ironically I fixed someone's PC that had crashed then I went home. Jumped back on the computer and noticed it was off. So I powered it back on. The OS came up I logged in and checked out some system logs that gave general failure information then...POOF! System shut off! Powered it back on, logged in started up a program then POOF! System shutoff again....and when I say shutoff I mean abruptly no power what's so ever. So immediately I'm thinking maybe a conflict caused by one of the games I installed (one of them has some type of anti-piracy protection software that must be run) so I was gonna uninstall it to see if it was the culprit, but to my surprise (and later on dismay) I got the wonderful BSOD! ...and it came with a wonderful message that stated, "Umountable_Boot_Volume." Oh joy!
When I tried to start my system it would go to the BSOD with that same message. After a bit of research I found simple solutions for the problem; all paths led to the great XP Recovery Console where the problem is resolved with a few commands: chkdsk /r, fixmbr, and fixboot. Simple right? WRONG! The problem was that my system would never make it to the recovery console; it would continuously reach a certain point and then shutoff. After several failed attempts I was right at the recovery console's door then instead of shutting down the system would just hang at the 'examining startup environment' screen. I worked on it throughout the night; I figured I'd get some rest and tackle the problem the next day so I could get a very important paper done for my class which was due in only 3 days.
Tuesday March 22nd
After I got home from work it was straight to my problematic PC! I had a paper to get done and this system was holding me up. After many failed attempts to use the recovery console, I broke out my NTFS4DOS boot CD and one of the first things I noticed was that the system wouldn't shutoff while I was using the tool. I was pleasantly relieved to see all of my data intact on the bad drive. So what I tried to do was run fixmbr, but doh! Wait that command isn't included in the NTFS4DOS boot disk, luckily chkdsk was. I was able to run chkdsk successfully from the NTFSDOS disk but it didn't help the drive. Next I ran chkdsk /r and it found and fixed problems on the drive. When I rebooted my system I found that it didn't resolve the issue and the system still couldn't load the operating system. I used NTFS4DOS again this time with the intention of copying my data from the faulty drive over to a backup drive, but the files couldn't be copied.
I figured I would break out my big guns now and I got my various distros of Linux LiveCDs and noticed that when I ran them they wouldn't see my faulty drive. Then put in Orphcrack which gave me a glimpse of hope because not only did it see my drive it told me some other things (you don't need to know about those things). So I while in Orphcrack I used the terminal to see if I could transfer my data from the bad drive to a backup drive. I got the same results as I did with NTFS4DOS, couldn't copy the files. As the hours roll past and I'm going around in circles, it begins to dawn on me all that I stand to lose if I can't extract my data from the drive. At this point I've done so much research into the problem that I'm realizing getting the drive to work may not be a realistic option.
Wednesday March 23rd
More research, more failed attempts at fixing the MBR and at extracting my data. Then suddenly while investigating exactly how the MBR works, I had an idea...why not copy the partition to a new drive, then format and install windows on the bad drive which would replace the MBR; and then I could put that copied partition back on the drive. I ran the idea by some other professionals one of which suggested I do a dd (bit by bit) copy of the drive onto another drive, leaving out the first 512MB where the MBR resides. So knowing there was a lot at stake, I downloaded a LiveCD of Gparted and fired it up. It loaded (and the system didn't shutoff at all) then unlike the other Linux distros immediately recognized my drive. So I used an option to check the partition and fix it if possible. Then I tried to copy that partition over to an external drive, but it failed due to errors on the bad drive. On the same LiveCD were a couple of other tools, one of which I used was Testdrive. Testdrive offered to write a new MBR and I did it with the hopes that that would give the drive what it needed to load the operating system. I then after rebooting the system tried to get the recovery console to work which it did. So the first thing I did was run the fixmbr command to which the system replied, "the old master boot record can not be read". Oh no what have I done!?!?!!? Thinking that I may have messed up something, I popped in NTFS4DOS and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw my files on the drive.
Time goes by and before long I'm working well into the wee hours of the morning and between while waiting for the system to boot, I'm really thinking about everything I could lose in greater detail, and there's no question that I have to get all of my data off of that drive. I figured I'd take a break from the drive issue and start working on my paper for my class, but wait...for this particular paper I have to login to a website with a code that was emailed to me. Guess where that code was? You guessed it, on that bad drive in a local folder I made for all emails I get from school. Without that code I can't take the assessment needed for the paper, and without that paper I'd be looking at an 'F'.
Now I'm really feeling the pain as I'm realizing that I will get a guaranteed F in my class unless I can either get the drive working or get my data off the drive. So I did what any IT professional would do....let a few tears swell up in my eyes, and then appealed to my higher power. That's right I prayed; big time! I had stuff I couldn't replace like family pictures I hadn't backedup yet. All of my codes and passwords needed for school, whitepages, ebooks, original game and movie concepts and scripts, important archived emails and addresses, etc. The bottom-line was I just couldn't afford to lose that information. So I prayed and prayed and prayed. Then while I was contemplating my next move, I started looking at local data recovery shops. Needless to say the prices were in an area I didn't really want to venture, but it was looking like I was going to have to. So I started reading one data recovery company's website and as they were listing the symptoms of hard drive failure I came across a section of dos and don'ts and wouldn't you know it, I had been doing all the don'ts. Things like when you experience hard drive failure don't run chkdsk, don't continue to work on the drive, etc. Those things are said to be further stressing the drive. That was just great. But one thing I noticed is that each time the BIOS came up S.M.A.R.T gave the drive an ok status so the drive couldn't possibly be bad right?
Wrong I downloaded the drive manufacturer's diagnostic boot CD. When I ran the tool I got a 0108 error/status code which according to the manufacturer's website is the drive seek time is not within the proper time limit and the drive should be replaced if the error is repeated. Well the error repeated so guess what bad drive. NOT what I wanted to hear although I pretty much knew it.
Working on the drive around the clock, I mean not a wink of sleep I finally prayed and prayed some more for a modern day miracle and would you believe my prayers were answered?
I had been working between two PCs, the PC that the drive originally came from and an identical PC. When I started getting the most problems from my system I transferred the drive over to the identical system. On that system there weren’t as many shutoffs, and only on that system is where I was able to actually get into the recovery console. That system also has the same version of XP, after I used the Gparted liveCD again and attempted to fix the mbr, and other things I rebooted with the intention of going to the recovery console hoping it would come up and stay up long enough for me to run the fixmbr command. At this particular time I had just reconnected the system’s working drive as the master and the bad drive as a slave to see if I would be able to transfer files between the two in Linux and which had failed before but this time using BackTrack 3 I was able to see my files on the bad drive. I couldn’t move files so I rebooted I forgot to go into the BIOS and tell it to boot from a CD so the system went into Windows (from the good drive) and I figured what the heck I’ll just see if I can access it one last time.
To my surprise I was not only able to see it but I could see my files and copy them to the good disk. Fortunately I learned many years ago to put all of your data in one area and not save bits here and there. So I was able to copy some files but when I tried to access where I stored all of my data I couldn’t access it. This was a critical moment for me, because in a minute I was going to find out if whatever I did in Testdisk rendered all my important data irretrievable or not. Once again I put the NTFS4DOS tool to work holding my breath as it loads and when I navigated to the folder in question, I attempted to list the contents of that directory and I got an access denied response. I fired off a quick prayer then tried again, and this time I was able to see the contents of the directory but I wasn’t able to copy them with NTFS4DOS. I booted to Windows again tried to access that folder and this time I was able to access and copy over all of my critical files.
Thursday March 24th
As the needed files were being transferred to the good drives I thanked God and began to start a temporary migration of some of the files to my laptop. I fired up my laptop and started the process of importing my personal mail folders which housed the codes I needed for school. Needless to say I got it all back and was able to finish and submit my paper for class. Completely exhausted from extremely late nights and staying up around the clock I was able to save my data, myself from failing my class, and I saved myself hundreds to thousands of dollars from not having to use a data recovery service to recovery my data.
Throughout this whole ordeal I learned some very important lessons one of which is to always pray; there is no problem too small to ask God for help with. Just know that your idea of how the problem should be fixed isn't necessarily in harmony with how God will fix it. If I had my way then in the blink of an eye the problem would have been as if nothing had ever happened, but with the way it played out, my faith was tested and strengthened, and along the way I acquired new skills, new tools, and some experience with an area that's not really my specialty under my belt. I was also left wondering what caused the initial problem? Was it just time for the hard drive to kick the bucket? or could the bass from my subwoofer be the cause? I have no idea.
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