Can't get diskpatch to boot up

[daveh551]

I have downloaded the trial version, installed it on the system, created the Bootable CD, and tried to boot it.  It displays some information about the C: drive geometry, then waits a VERY long time (may possibly be owing to read errors on the second drive that I'm trying to recover), and finally says (on a black screen) "Bad or missing command line interpreter" "Enter the full shell command line:" "command.com /P /E:256"  And then just sits there.

From the documentation and guides, this sounds like my best hope for recovering this disk, but it won't help if I can't even get it to start up.

Any help?

[daveh551]

Well, I think I figured out some additional information.

It looks as though the "Bootable CD" isn't bootable by itself.  It HAS to have SOMEPLACE to write something, or it just won't run. Since initially the good drive in my system was completely formatted as NTFS, it couldn't use that.  The drive that I was trying to repair did have one partition that was formatted with a FAT system, and I think it was trying to use that, but probably getting read errors.

When I added a memory card through the USB port, it began getting farther, and displaying an "A:>" prompt, though it still didn't know what to do after that.  Finally, after I figured out that I could use an SD memory card, and that I could get my system to boot from it, I went ahead and followed the instructions to make it bootable, booted from it, and it came up (finally - still took forever at the Windows 98 screen - apparently while it tried in vain to read the bad drive).  It took it about 15 minutes to go through the disk check, and then, when I told it to start Disk Patch, it's hung with a blue screen with the Disk Patch header, the cursor positioned at the top left corner, two white horizontal lines about 75% down the screen, and no text. The disk activity light is on, so I'm assuming it's still trying to gather some information about the bad drive, so I'll give it a few more hours.

BTW, when I disconnected the bad drive and tried to start from the CD (without the USB memory card), it gave me a string of "cylinder > 1023" messages before telling me it couldn't find the command interpreter.  It would probably be useful to checkout and document the start up procedure if there are NO FAT partitions available, and no floppy drive available.  Here in the US, floppy drives have not been in use for several years.  I considered pulling one out of a 9-year old system that I still had, and then realized that even if I got it connected, I no longer had any diskettes to put in it.

[Tom]

It looks as though the "Bootable CD" isn't bootable by itself.  It HAS to have SOMEPLACE to write something, or it just won't run. Since initially the good drive in my system was completely formatted as NTFS, it couldn't use that.

This is an incorrect assumption.

It would probably be useful to checkout and document the start up procedure if there are NO FAT partitions available, and no floppy drive available.

That IS documented, and the no FAT or no floppy available is not an issue.
If the DiskPatch CD malfunctions in this particular way the problem lies elsewhere. In most cases such as these the problem can be traced back to either faulty hardware or a FreeDOS compatibility problem. For that last problem we have a solution, which is a DiskPatch distri that has a different DOS version in it, so give that a try:
http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/downloads/Demo/DiskPatch_Setup_w98dos.exe
Uninstall your current version first.

In addition, creating a bootable USB key is most likely to work. The current distri on offer on the download page has this option. Look in the Start menu / DiskPatch section.

[daveh551]

Thanks for the reply, Tom.  It might be a FreeDOS issue; other than the disk with read errors, I don't think there's anything wrong with the hardware.  It seems to run Win7 just fine with no other problems.

I did end up using the DiskPatch_USB to make the SD Memory card bootable, and that did work.  It appears that it uses that Win98 set up (at least it came up into a Win98 logo screen on boot).  Is that correct?

Where I am now is that it appears to try for a long time (probably an hour) to read the disk, then reports an MBR error.  When you click any key, it goes on trying to read for a long time (it had been a couple hours when I went to bed last night) and finally reports "Disk is not accessible."  I don't know if the Support Analysis Log will show anything useful or not.  I'm trying to create one now, but it's going through the whole process again. I'll post again when and if I get something.

[Tom]

Sounds like you'd be better off creating the SMART log first:
http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/dp_manual/guide_smartcheck.htm
You could also try bypassing some of the start-up tests, check the options (troubleshooting) menu from the DiskPatch boot menu.

[daveh551]

I actually did run a SMART log yesterday, but hadn't exited DiskPatch yet to look at it. DP just finished the Support Analysis Log (after running for 10 hours) with the message that the disk can't be accessed.  I've attached the log.

After exiting DiskPatch, I looked at what I assume is the SMART log - REPORT.TXT - at least it looks like a SMART log.  But it shows absolutely nothing about the failing drive. Other than acknowledging it's presence in the inventory of drives at the top, it doesn't even mention it.  I'll try disabling the start up checks and see if I can run it again.

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[daveh551]

Okay, I finally got a SMART log.  This was done immediately after the drive was powered up after having been powered down for several hours.  It seems to work well for a short period after it's first powered on (a short period being probably on the order of a minute).  When it was still the boot drive in it's original system, I could sometimes get it to be recognized by the controller and start into the boot process, but never got it to continue functioning long enough to actually boot.

Other than the 14% health (!!) , I didn't notice anything distinctly different about the drive 1 report (the failing drive) from the drive 0 report, but I don't know how to interpret all the numbers.  I'm hopeful you'll have some guidance.

Thanks for your help.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Joep]

Hello,

If the data on this disk is important then should not attempt anymore diy attempts, but let a datarecovery lab deal with it.

During startup DiskPatch selects some random sectors spread accross the disk to read to see if we can access the disk. We get a fail on each sector we try. Now we can go ahead and disable to startup check, but I feel it would be unwise and not get us anywhere.

The SMART log for this disk shows a significant amount of reallocated sectors and more pending. So you are potentially losing data already.

[daveh551]

Okay, I appreciate your help.

I did take it to a professional recovery service for an estimate, and they gave me a price that was more than the data was worth.  It's mostly going to be inconvenience. Anyway, I thought I would give this a try.