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Jamie M
May 20, 2013, 2:20:43 AM5/20/13
to
Hi,
A bit off topic but I'm looking for some advice on harddrive recovery.
I ran out of motherboard SATA ports when buying a new HD, and had a RAID
PCI-e card laying around with some SATA ports on it that could be used
for non RAID, so figured I would try to hook my CD-ROM up to it and free
up one of the motherboard SATA ports. After rebooting with this
configuration I have a problem with one of my 2TB HD drives that has
become unreadable RAW format, and is showing up as two partitions now
(900+GB each) when viewed with multiple different recovery software, but
before it was a single partition. The RAID card is a SiI3132 & 3132 -
PCI Express (1x) to 2 Port SATA300. Is it even possible that the PCIe
card could have messed with a HD plugged into the motherboard SATA?
There are two other harddrives in the computer and only the one HD has
this problem. I was just getting ready to buy a new HD to backup the
two 2TB drives so terrible timing doh!
cheers,
Jamie
A bit off topic but I'm looking for some advice on harddrive recovery.
I ran out of motherboard SATA ports when buying a new HD, and had a RAID
PCI-e card laying around with some SATA ports on it that could be used
for non RAID, so figured I would try to hook my CD-ROM up to it and free
up one of the motherboard SATA ports. After rebooting with this
configuration I have a problem with one of my 2TB HD drives that has
become unreadable RAW format, and is showing up as two partitions now
(900+GB each) when viewed with multiple different recovery software, but
before it was a single partition. The RAID card is a SiI3132 & 3132 -
PCI Express (1x) to 2 Port SATA300. Is it even possible that the PCIe
card could have messed with a HD plugged into the motherboard SATA?
There are two other harddrives in the computer and only the one HD has
this problem. I was just getting ready to buy a new HD to backup the
two 2TB drives so terrible timing doh!
cheers,
Jamie
Jasen Betts
May 20, 2013, 6:09:41 AM5/20/13
to
--
⚂⚃ 100% natural
--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ne...@netfront.net ---
Martin Riddle
May 20, 2013, 7:34:32 PM5/20/13
to
"Jamie M" <jmo...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:kncfbu$rrv$1...@speranza.aioe.org...
clone first, then experiment on that image.
Cheers
Dave Platt
May 20, 2013, 8:19:42 PM5/20/13
to
> Hi,
>
> A bit off topic but I'm looking for some advice on harddrive recovery.
> I ran out of motherboard SATA ports when buying a new HD, and had a
> RAID PCI-e card laying around with some SATA ports on it that could be
> used for non RAID, so figured I would try to hook my CD-ROM up to it
> and free up one of the motherboard SATA ports. After rebooting with
> this configuration I have a problem with one of my 2TB HD drives that
> has become unreadable RAW format, and is showing up as two partitions
> now (900+GB each) when viewed with multiple different recovery
> software, but before it was a single partition. The RAID card is a
> SiI3132 & 3132 - PCI Express (1x) to 2 Port SATA300. Is it even
> possible that the PCIe card could have messed with a HD plugged into
> the motherboard SATA?
If the PCIe card has an onboard BIOS, it's possible that the BIOS
>
> A bit off topic but I'm looking for some advice on harddrive recovery.
> I ran out of motherboard SATA ports when buying a new HD, and had a
> RAID PCI-e card laying around with some SATA ports on it that could be
> used for non RAID, so figured I would try to hook my CD-ROM up to it
> and free up one of the motherboard SATA ports. After rebooting with
> this configuration I have a problem with one of my 2TB HD drives that
> has become unreadable RAW format, and is showing up as two partitions
> now (900+GB each) when viewed with multiple different recovery
> software, but before it was a single partition. The RAID card is a
> SiI3132 & 3132 - PCI Express (1x) to 2 Port SATA300. Is it even
> possible that the PCIe card could have messed with a HD plugged into
> the motherboard SATA?
tried to "initialize" the cards plugged into it in some way... and if
it was using the main PC BIOS I/O routines (rather than talking
directly to the SiI3132 controller on the board) the requests might
have gone to the wrong drive at the PC BIOS level.
Alternatively, your operating system might have become confused by the
sudden appearance of new drives, or old drives in new places.
Depending on how the OS and BIOS "enumerate" the drives, it's possible
that the presence of the CD-ROM on the add-on card had the effect of
"renumbering" the other drives... once again, requests which some
software intended to go to one drive might have gone to another.
If your PC BIOS was configured to give "drives in plug-in controllers"
priority over "drives connected to on-the-motherboard controllers"
then some confusion of this sort might have happened.
What OS and version did you boot?
--
Dave Platt <dpl...@radagast.org> AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!
Nobody
May 20, 2013, 11:19:29 PM5/20/13
to
On Sun, 19 May 2013 23:20:43 -0700, Jamie M wrote:
> After rebooting with this configuration I have a problem with one of my
> 2TB HD drives
512-byte or 4096-byte sectors?
> After rebooting with this configuration I have a problem with one of my
> 2TB HD drives
If the drive has 4096-byte physical sectors, the reported logical sector
size depends upon the controller. It may report either 512-byte
or 4096-byte sectors. 512-byte sectors have better compatibility but worse
efficiency (writing a single 512-byte sector involves a read-modify-write
cycle).
The partition table stores partition data (start and length) in units of
sectors. If you attach the drive to a controller which reports 512-byte
sectors, partition the drive, then re-attach it to a controller which
reports 4096-byte sectors, the BIOS/OS will misinterpret the partition
table. If this is the case, you just need to edit the partition table with
a program which doesn't modify any other part of the disc (Linux' fdisk is
fine), either multiplying or dividing all sector-based values by a factor
of 8.
I can't be sure that this is your problem, but it's common for 2TB drives
to use 4096-byte sectors, and I had a similar problem using such a drive
in an external enclosure. The enclosure has both USB and eSATA connectors;
connecting it via USB results in the enclosure's SATA-USB bridge
reporting 512-byte sectors, while connecting it via eSATA results in the
mobo's SATA controller reporting 4096-byte sectors.
Jamie M
May 21, 2013, 8:19:44 PM5/21/13
to
On 5/20/2013 5:19 PM, Dave Platt wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> A bit off topic but I'm looking for some advice on harddrive recovery.
>> I ran out of motherboard SATA ports when buying a new HD, and had a
>> RAID PCI-e card laying around with some SATA ports on it that could be
>> used for non RAID, so figured I would try to hook my CD-ROM up to it
>> and free up one of the motherboard SATA ports. After rebooting with
>> this configuration I have a problem with one of my 2TB HD drives that
>> has become unreadable RAW format, and is showing up as two partitions
>> now (900+GB each) when viewed with multiple different recovery
>> software, but before it was a single partition. The RAID card is a
>> SiI3132& 3132 - PCI Express (1x) to 2 Port SATA300. Is it even
>> Hi,
>>
>> A bit off topic but I'm looking for some advice on harddrive recovery.
>> I ran out of motherboard SATA ports when buying a new HD, and had a
>> RAID PCI-e card laying around with some SATA ports on it that could be
>> used for non RAID, so figured I would try to hook my CD-ROM up to it
>> and free up one of the motherboard SATA ports. After rebooting with
>> this configuration I have a problem with one of my 2TB HD drives that
>> has become unreadable RAW format, and is showing up as two partitions
>> now (900+GB each) when viewed with multiple different recovery
>> software, but before it was a single partition. The RAID card is a
>> possible that the PCIe card could have messed with a HD plugged into
>> the motherboard SATA?
>
> If the PCIe card has an onboard BIOS, it's possible that the BIOS
> tried to "initialize" the cards plugged into it in some way... and if
> it was using the main PC BIOS I/O routines (rather than talking
> directly to the SiI3132 controller on the board) the requests might
> have gone to the wrong drive at the PC BIOS level.
>
> Alternatively, your operating system might have become confused by the
> sudden appearance of new drives, or old drives in new places.
> Depending on how the OS and BIOS "enumerate" the drives, it's possible
> that the presence of the CD-ROM on the add-on card had the effect of
> "renumbering" the other drives... once again, requests which some
> software intended to go to one drive might have gone to another.
>
> If your PC BIOS was configured to give "drives in plug-in controllers"
> priority over "drives connected to on-the-motherboard controllers"
> then some confusion of this sort might have happened.
>
> What OS and version did you boot?
Hi,
>> the motherboard SATA?
>
> If the PCIe card has an onboard BIOS, it's possible that the BIOS
> tried to "initialize" the cards plugged into it in some way... and if
> it was using the main PC BIOS I/O routines (rather than talking
> directly to the SiI3132 controller on the board) the requests might
> have gone to the wrong drive at the PC BIOS level.
>
> Alternatively, your operating system might have become confused by the
> sudden appearance of new drives, or old drives in new places.
> Depending on how the OS and BIOS "enumerate" the drives, it's possible
> that the presence of the CD-ROM on the add-on card had the effect of
> "renumbering" the other drives... once again, requests which some
> software intended to go to one drive might have gone to another.
>
> If your PC BIOS was configured to give "drives in plug-in controllers"
> priority over "drives connected to on-the-motherboard controllers"
> then some confusion of this sort might have happened.
>
> What OS and version did you boot?
It is Windows 7 64bit. I think the PCIe card does have the onboard
BIOS, as during boot up a prompt comes up "press F4 to configure the
RAID card" or something to that effect. I actually did press F4 to just
take a look, didn't change anything - but I think thats where the
harddrive got messed up most likely.
cheers,
Jamie
>
Jamie M
May 21, 2013, 8:22:31 PM5/21/13
to
On 5/20/2013 8:19 PM, Nobody wrote:
> On Sun, 19 May 2013 23:20:43 -0700, Jamie M wrote:
>
>> After rebooting with this configuration I have a problem with one of my
>> 2TB HD drives
>
> 512-byte or 4096-byte sectors?
Hi,
> On Sun, 19 May 2013 23:20:43 -0700, Jamie M wrote:
>
>> After rebooting with this configuration I have a problem with one of my
>> 2TB HD drives
>
> 512-byte or 4096-byte sectors?
It was NTFS with 4096-byte sectors.
>
> If the drive has 4096-byte physical sectors, the reported logical sector
> size depends upon the controller. It may report either 512-byte
> or 4096-byte sectors. 512-byte sectors have better compatibility but worse
> efficiency (writing a single 512-byte sector involves a read-modify-write
> cycle).
>
> The partition table stores partition data (start and length) in units of
> sectors. If you attach the drive to a controller which reports 512-byte
> sectors, partition the drive, then re-attach it to a controller which
> reports 4096-byte sectors, the BIOS/OS will misinterpret the partition
> table. If this is the case, you just need to edit the partition table with
> a program which doesn't modify any other part of the disc (Linux' fdisk is
> fine), either multiplying or dividing all sector-based values by a factor
> of 8.
>
> I can't be sure that this is your problem, but it's common for 2TB drives
> to use 4096-byte sectors, and I had a similar problem using such a drive
> in an external enclosure. The enclosure has both USB and eSATA connectors;
> connecting it via USB results in the enclosure's SATA-USB bridge
> reporting 512-byte sectors, while connecting it via eSATA results in the
> mobo's SATA controller reporting 4096-byte sectors.
full drive backup from recovery software.
cheers,
Jamie
>
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