TheDoctor Posted July 31, 2010 Share Posted July 31, 2010 You all know the story of my D drive which I keep complaining about, with good reason. Mouse asks me to do this: dd if=/dev/sda3 of=header.bin count=2048 and he tells me that the MBR asploded. It would fit, because the drive isn't mounting on Windows or Ubuntu. I was doing something with an ubuntu mbr thing and I think that's what caused this in the first place, maybe, maybe not. Maybe it was me trying to update 9.10 whatever. The file system isn't being recognized, and I've tried everything I know how to do. The funny thing is the same thing happened to the C drive, but I fixed it with a recovery disk. If I fixed the C drive, then I can fix my D drive. People who know anything about MBR fixing (not you mouse and your writing of 512 bytes of randomness), please help. Edit: the thing I used was ms-sys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonymouse Posted August 2, 2010 Share Posted August 2, 2010 *chokes on orange juice* Why didn't I think of that? Open the Disk Utility in ubuntu and screw around with that a bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Acmex Posted August 2, 2010 Share Posted August 2, 2010 It's not your master boot record that's broken, lad. The MBR exists on the first harddisk or floppy disk that the computer has to load, it's sole purpose is to load the bootloader (NTLDR/GRUB/LiLo/MSDOS). If that were broken (Which it probably was) then NO OS could boot at all. What you have here is either a broken partition table or a badly set filesystem hex, the former of which means you're basically screwed, you might be able to fix the latter. The partition table holds the definitions of the physical partitions (how many cylinders, ect) and where they're located on the disk. To rewrite the PT is to erase the entire disk. The filesystem hex *may* be stored in that table, but I'm not exactly certain. The hex defines what file system it is (FAT16/FAT32/NTFS/HFS/EXT*/UDF) so that it can be read correctly by the OS. Basically, stop looking for a solution in the MBR. You won't find it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDoctor Posted August 2, 2010 Author Share Posted August 2, 2010 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0004eb4b Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 1275 10240000 27 Unknown /dev/sda2 * 1275 10367 73028608 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda3 10367 16194 46805903 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda4 16195 19457 26210047+ 5 Extended /dev/sda5 16195 19316 25077433+ 83 Linux /dev/sda6 19317 19457 1132551 82 Linux swap / Solaris ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Im not quite sure why it says that sda1 is borked and sda3 is fine. Sda1 is the windows recovery partition, and sda3 is my D drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonymouse Posted August 2, 2010 Share Posted August 2, 2010 It's not your master boot record that's broken, lad. The MBR exists on the first harddisk or floppy disk that the computer has to load, it's sole purpose is to load the bootloader (NTLDR/GRUB/LiLo/MSDOS). If that were broken (Which it probably was) then NO OS could boot at all. What you have here is either a broken partition table or a badly set filesystem hex, the former of which means you're basically screwed, you might be able to fix the latter. The partition table holds the definitions of the physical partitions (how many cylinders, ect) and where they're located on the disk. To rewrite the PT is to erase the entire disk. The filesystem hex *may* be stored in that table, but I'm not exactly certain. The hex defines what file system it is (FAT16/FAT32/NTFS/HFS/EXT*/UDF) so that it can be read correctly by the OS. Basically, stop looking for a solution in the MBR. You won't find it. The MBR is a way of defining the partition table, and there are other partition table formats, but the most common one is MBR. So STFU. ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0004eb4b Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 1275 10240000 27 Unknown /dev/sda2 * 1275 10367 73028608 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda3 10367 16194 46805903 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda4 16195 19457 26210047+ 5 Extended /dev/sda5 16195 19316 25077433+ 83 Linux /dev/sda6 19317 19457 1132551 82 Linux swap / Solaris ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Im not quite sure why it says that sda1 is borked and sda3 is fine. Sda1 is the windows recovery partition, and sda3 is my D drive. It doesn't mean that sda1 is borked, it means that sda1 contains an unknown filesystem. Linux probably doesn't have drivers for windows recovery partitions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDoctor Posted August 2, 2010 Author Share Posted August 2, 2010 (edited) But then why does it say NTFS if GParted doesn't see it as NTFS? Also, Fat32 would explain it. I think... Edited October 4, 2019 by Slimy Slug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Acmex Posted August 3, 2010 Share Posted August 3, 2010 Nah, the Fat32 is universally readable, for the most part (Minus addict's OS, lul) And that's actually your recovery partition, the F32 formatting makes sense there. Right now, it looks like the only way to get that partition back is to reformat. There is a way to save the data, but you'll need a partition/disk of equal size. Mouse knows more about this than I do, but it's got something to do with the "dd" command. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonymouse Posted August 3, 2010 Share Posted August 3, 2010 the "dd" command. HAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! The powerful tool that can wreak havoc or help fix things depending on its use... :heart: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Acmex Posted August 3, 2010 Share Posted August 3, 2010 Wait, his MBR can't be broken; it HAS to be fine. He has only one physical drive, the MBR exists only on the first sector and therefore is not on /dev/sda3. Now, just wait for mouse to get back from camping (which will give you time to get another HDD/BFFD) so that he can give you the proper dd command. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDoctor Posted August 3, 2010 Author Share Posted August 3, 2010 He has only one physical drive ACMEX HAS EPIC FAILT. I have 2 HDDs in my laptop, C and D. E is the cd drive. Exactally the same thing happened to both. C was fixed with doing all the vista recovery cd commands. Ergo, it's possible to fix the D drive. Also, I tried to mount it yesterday, and it said it had a missing NTFS signature. Edit: i just realized that I may have been duped. One HDD partioned into 2 seperate drives, BUT I REALLY DONT THINK SO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonymouse Posted August 5, 2010 Share Posted August 5, 2010 Edit: i just realized that I may have been duped. One HDD partioned into 2 seperate drives, BUT I REALLY DONT THINK SO. I really do. sda is one device, and sda1, sda2, sda3 etc are partitions of it. If there are multiple devices, then it'd be another block device - sdb. sdb1, sdb2, etc. So yeah, it is in fact just another partition to your main drive. About the proper dd command, idk. The header.bin file that you sent me should contain the header for an NTFS partition, but I don't know what that looks like if correct. So sorry, but I can't help You could of course boot windows and ask your mom to run CHKDISK on D: to fix it. Tell her you can't access any of your important data (say homework stuff is stored on it if she still won't). CHKDISK should offer to fix it if anything at all can be done. If not, I can no longer help you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts