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Contents > Common Questions
Chapter 3. COMMON QUESTIONS
My damaged hard drive is larger than 10Gb. How do I access the larger drive
size? Is it the drive's problem or does your software not support drives more
than 8GB?
Problem Assessment:
This client uses Windows NT installed under VMWare. When trying
to scan partition that was 10Gb in size, they would get an error message saying
"Error reading physical sector".
Probable Reason:
It could be that there are bad clusters on the drive. As well, this client is
using an operating system or a system-board BIOS that does not support LBA
mode.
MS-DOS versions prior to version 6.0 do not support LBA mode. Some
versions of system-board BIOS report that LBA mode is not
supported for larger drives, when it actually does support it. VMWare v.3.0
is an example. Active@ Partition Recovery tries read the drive 100
times. If it encounters a consistent read failure, it reports this as a
problem.
Solution:
Your system should be using a version of DOS that supports LBA mode. If
it is MS-DOS then version must be 6.0 or later. In most cases you do not
need to tell Active@ Partition Recovery to force LBA mode, if the
BIOS supports it. Active@ Partition Recovery will recognize this support
signal from the BIOS and will force LBA automatically, giving you
access to larger sized hard drives.
If the system BIOS reports that LBA mode is not supported, Active@
Partition Recovery uses the standard Int13h to access the drive.
Try to force LBA mode by starting Active@ Partition Recovery with
a parameter -LBA, for example:
A:\>PR.EXE -LBA
Note that forcing LBA mode will not help if the BIOS truly does
not support LBA mode. This usually happens with older versions of BIOS.
If this is the case, try physically removing the hard drive and plugging it
into another machine having a newer version of BIOS.
If your drive has lots of bad clusters, its advisable to save your data onto
another physical drive and to get rid of the damaged hard drive.
3.4. Limitations
of Active@ Partition Recovery.
Are there situations in which Active@ Partition Recovery is not able to
restore partitions or Logical Drives?
Here is a list of such situations:
-
Instead of deleting an old partition, a new partition has been created and
formatted over an old partition.
-
Some other information has been written into the sectors where partition
information was previously located.
In the above scenarios, it is most likely Active@ Partition Recovery will
not be able to detect the deleted partition as the partition information has
been overwritten. Even if the Master Boot Record and Partition Table
have been detected and restored successfully, if data on the drive has been
overwritten, it will be displayed as garbage data in some folders.
3.5. FDISK and
Windows 98 Limitations.
Why is it that FDISK and Windows 98 cannot display data in a
detected and recovered partition?
Problem Assessment:
Active@ Partition Recovery was used to detect and successfully recover
a deleted partition. After rebooting the system, FDISK was not able to
see the recovered partition.
Similarly, when trying to access drive C:, an error message was displayed,
saying that the drive was not valid.
Probable Reason:
Both the Partition Table and Master Boot Record may have been
damaged.
Solution:
Restore the MBR by running FDISK with parameter /MBR as
in the example below:
A:\>FDISK.EXE /MBR
After the MBR has been restored, run Active@ Partition Recovery.
If partitions have been restored successfully, they will be detected.
3.6. Error Writing
Physical Sector.
While saving the partition information back to the hard drive, I receive an
error message saying "Error writing physical sector" and I am not
able to save the partition information.
Probable Reason:
-
The Boot Sector might be write-protected. Some BIOS configurations
allow for protecting the Boot Sector from write operations in order to
prevent viruses from damaging attacks.
-
The client might be trying to run the software from Windows 95/98/ME MS-DOS
Prompt console.
-
Another reason might be that the Hard Disk Drive is physically damaged (i.e. it
has bad clusters).
Solution:
-
Check your BIOS settings. If you have setting that reads Virus Warning,
or similar, make sure that it has been Disabled.
-
DO NOT run the software from within the Windows Operating System. Start your
computer in Command Prompt mode. To do so, press [F8] during the
Windows startup routine, or boot from a system recovery floppy disk.
-
If your hard drive is physically damaged, it is better to remove all important
data from the damaged drive and copy it to another Hard Disk Drive.
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