Uiler Posted July 9, 2006 Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 (edited) OK, here's a brief run-down of the situation. On my laptop I have a dual-boot Windows XP Professional/Mandrake 2005 LE system. I needed to do some work in Linux for the first time in a while so when I booted in today I did a lot of updates including a new kernel (don't know if this is the cause of the problem, just some info). Now I have an external USB2 hard drive. Formatted using NTFS. Contains all of my movies and music plus a lot of photos and other personal stuff. So I would love love love to be able to get it back working. It was working perfectly fine before I booted into Linux. Linux doesn't see the hard drive, but that's OK. It's always had problems with external hard drives on my system anyway. I did the updates, rebooted the computer, entered Linux again, did my work, no problems, rebooted into Windows and it can't detect my hard drive!!! No, wait, it can but it keeps on saying, "This drive is not formatted." Did Mandriva just destroy my external hard drive and all my data with it?!!! Note I pulled out another external hard drive and using the same cable and connection Windows had no problems with it. It's just the hard drive that was connected to the computer (and turned on) when Linux was running. One issue I can think of is that LILO never liked external hard drives. If I start the computer from a cold start it was OK. But if I did a reboot, it would go "Duplicate volume detected" and the hard drive wouldn't be detected in Windows. But if I turned the drive off and back on it would be detected so no problems. But it makes me think that this might be a LILO problem. I've tried turning the drive off when the computer is starting up and then turning the drive on when I log in to Windows but same "The drive is not formatted" problem. And no, Mandriva can't see the drive either so I have no idea whether the data has been destroyed or not. I'm currently downloading Knoppix, but honestly, I'm really disappointed with Mandriva. How can it possibly destroy a hard drive just by doing security updates??? I thought it was bad enough once when Fedora locked me out of my own system because of a bad security update, but that was easily fixed. Please help! EDIT: OK, I plugged the other USB 2 NTFS external hard drive into the laptop with the same cables, in the same USB slot and rebooted the computer so it had to go through LILO too. And Windows detected it perfectly. So it doesn't look like a LILO problem. It looks like Mandriva's security updates really did destroy my data. Damn you Mandriva!!!!! You destroyed hundreds of gigs worth of my data - movies, music, photos, personal letters!!!! With security updates!!!!! EDIT: trying to get into the drive using Windows command prompt it says that there is no recognizable file system on the disk. Damn you Mandriva!!!!! Your security updates corrupted the file system on my hard drive!!!!!! Edited July 9, 2006 by Uiler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted July 9, 2006 Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 (edited) Sounds like there's something else at fault here. One moment it plugs fine on another windows computer and shows a blank filesystem, and the next moment, it refuses to even do that. That is not normal behaviour. I can't see how Mandriva destroyed it, no formatting command in mandriva is ever used without countless dialogs prepending it. It's unlikely to be a kernel bug, as the kernel tends to be pretty precautious -- and if your drive invokes a bug in it, it's gotta be a shit drive for not following the USB mass storage standard. Chances are something went pebkac here, its just a matter of what, or it could possibly have been a faulty drive. As for getting your data back, you may have had a chance of getting it back by taking it to a data recovery specialist, but it seems you've screwed around with it since, which slighly reduces your chances. James Edited July 9, 2006 by iphitus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uiler Posted July 9, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 I think you are confused. There is no "another computer" involved. There is only one computer - my laptop which is a Windows/Linux dual-boot. And you're getting what happened confused too. 1. Working perfectly fine in Windows for 1 and a half years, no problems. 2. I boot into Linux for the first time in months. 3. I do security updates on Linux including the kernel. 4. Reboot computer back into Linux (because of kernel). Do some work for 2 hours. 5. Reboot into Windows. 6. Windows can only detect external hard drive as "no filesystem." Now, either by some amazing coincidence, this external hard drive which had been working perfectly well for over a year suddenly decided to destroy itself in the two hours I was in Linux for the first time in over 6 months. Or it was something to do with Linux. Note that when I was using both Linux and Windows regularly over 6 months ago I was regularly booting in and out of Linux with the same external hard drive attached and turned on (sometimes 2-3 times a day) and this never happened. The only thing that changed was dadadum was the security updates I just installed in that 2 hour bracket when the hard drive stopped working. The exact same hardware, the exact same installations of both Windows and Linux with nothing changed but...the security updates in Mandriva I applied in that 2 hour window. Well, obviously I applied security updates to Windows for the last 6 months as well. But that doesn't seem to have caused any problems for the last 6 months. And no, I'm not that stupid to ever try to write to an NTFS partition in Linux. So as I said, we have two choices here, an amazing coincidence. Or some changes in Mandriva with the security updates did something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted July 9, 2006 Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 Well if you had explained things clearly, I wouldnt have misunderstood you :) I cant see how it could happen. I spose it's possible, but it's so unlikely. Take a look in /var/log for the urpmi log, and post what was upgraded. James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted July 9, 2006 Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 I agree with iphitus that the problem is probably not related to Mandriva. I can hardly imagine that a security fix would destroy a drive. It's imho almost impossible that such thing can happen. From what I read, I think the problem is due to a badly unmounted drive (did you unmount the drive anyway?) before rebooting and a subsequent BIOS error. I had something similar happening with an internal drive in a dual-boot laptop whose filesystem seemed to be killed after a crash once in Windows, and a few days later in Linux (it was Debian btw). After a reboot, no filesystem could be found and the drive could not be detected by the BIOS later. But disconnecting the drive from all cables, resetting the BIOS and inserting the drive again (with subsequent auto-detection) brought the drive back to life with all partitions intact. Sometimes it is simply a hardware or BIOS problem, although it looks like a software problem. Try with resetting the BIOS. Maybe it works in your scenario, too. PS: Please watch your language. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uiler Posted July 9, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 (edited) Well if you had explained things clearly, I wouldnt have misunderstood you :) I cant see how it could happen. I spose it's possible, but it's so unlikely. Take a look in /var/log for the urpmi log, and post what was upgraded. James I seem to be an attractor for weird problems, and not just in computers. You don't know how many times I've had to explain a problem and it starts with, "Well, it's a long story..." :) As for your second point, that's why I thought it might be the kernel. I'm not in Linux right now so I can't check - I'm in Windows downloading Knoppix, hoping that by some miracle I can "see" the data using Knoppix and transfer it to another hard drive. But I remember looking at the list of "updates" and they were the normal stuff like X11, openssh, etc. that always seem to require security updates. The only thing I can think of, that is obviously connected with filesystems is the kernel. I updated to kernel-i686-up-4GB-2.6.11.13mdk-1-1mdk.i586.rpm which I think is the last kernel update to Mandriva 2005LE. It seems to be working fine (well except for the whole external hard drive thing which may not be its problem). I agree with iphitus that the problem is probably not related to Mandriva. I can hardly imagine that a security fix would destroy a drive. It's imho almost impossible that such thing can happen. From what I read, I think the problem is due to a badly unmounted drive (did you unmount the drive anyway?) before rebooting and a subsequent BIOS error. I had something similar happening with an internal drive in a dual-boot laptop whose filesystem seemed to be killed after a crash once in Windows, and a few days later in Linux (it was Debian btw). After a reboot, no filesystem could be found and the drive could not be detected by the BIOS later. But disconnecting the drive from all cables, resetting the BIOS and inserting the drive again (with subsequent auto-detection) brought the drive back to life with all partitions intact. Sometimes it is simply a hardware or BIOS problem, although it looks like a software problem. Try with resetting the BIOS. Maybe it works in your scenario, too. PS: Please watch your language. ;) I didn't even mount the drive, at least not that I know of. I usually let Linux do everything automatically. I had no intention of using the external hard drive while I was in Linux anyway so I didn't really care. It may have been mounted automatically by Mandriva, but then Mandriva should have unmounted it automatically when I rebooted the computer right (soft reboot, not hard reboot)? Edited July 9, 2006 by Uiler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted July 9, 2006 Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 (edited) arctic: failing to unmount hte drive would have no effect on an NTFS filesystem. The importance of unmounting, is so that all data can be flushed, and the partition can be left in a stable and clean state. In NTFS's case, Linux does not write to it at all, so there is no way it can be left in an inconsistent state. Take for example your / partition, it isnt unmounted at all. It's just mounted read only, and then has a sync forced so that all data is flushed and written. I think this is hardware error, I can't possibly conceive a situation where this could occur and if it did occur due to an update, it would have happened to someone else already. Reminds me of the time when a friend thought a quicktime update destroyed his external hdd. Also known as coincidental hardware failure. James Edited July 9, 2006 by iphitus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted July 9, 2006 Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 Have you tried running any diagnostics on the drive? Pull it out of the casing, stick it in a computer, get the tools from the website of the drive manufacturer and run a diagnostics. I bet you'll find some problems (bad sectors, hardware failure, etc.) I'll reiterate what others said: If the drive was never mounted in Linux then it Linux wouldn't even touch it. It'd just ignore it and pretend it isn't there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uiler Posted July 9, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 I've run diagnostics with the software tools provided by Maxtor when you buy their "One-Touch" series. It keeps on saying the drive is in perfect health. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted July 9, 2006 Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 maxtor...eew. that's the problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uiler Posted July 9, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 Well, now that I've calmed down a bit, I can look at the brighter side of things. I was worried that I was running out of space on the HD. I guess *that* won't be a problem anymore :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted July 9, 2006 Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 arctic: failing to unmount hte drive would have no effect on an NTFS filesystem.Ooops, I should read more carefully. Didn't notice that you were talking about NTFS systems but thought of a fully mounted vfat drive. And there, a hard-reset can cause problems. (own experience) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uiler Posted July 9, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 (edited) Anyway, thanks for the help guys. Knoppix has failed me :( You see the thing is I am scared stiff of doing anything with this computer like running recovery console or installing more programs because I have an extremely important presentation to do in a week. If my laptop gets screwed up (instead of just the external hard drive), I have backups but the time it would take to get things back on track (esp. as I haven't even finished the presentation)...I'd be in really really really really really big trouble. Not only that but I'm currently quite sick, so I really don't have the time to risk anything with this laptop. Anyway, I think I'll leave it here for now and get back to it in a week or two when I have the time (and the leisure of not having a big deadline coming up) to work things out. Edited July 9, 2006 by Uiler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scoonma Posted July 9, 2006 Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 If you're able to mount the disk again, this tool might be helpful: http://jbj.rapanden.dk/magicrescue/ Good luck, Scoonma Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted July 9, 2006 Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 There is no need for the drive to be mounted to write over the partition table ... Indeed the drive shouldn't be ,ounted when you write over the partition table.... Who knows what the updates did? Possibly changing something like udev or a proc filesystem over? hence it would read and reread partition tables. The most likely explanation is the partition table was trashed and a recovery toool might find the backup partition table intact but the less you do with it the better! Given the partition is NTFS I would say the best chance is using NTFS tools ... don't look for the answer in linux ! Google: NTFS partition recovery gives me lots of hits.... which is best I don't know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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