RBRX issue, please help REALLY IMPORTANT!

[chivas]

2 days ago, i installed rollback v9 after a clean install of win7 ultimate on a new HD i recently bought. it's a hitachi deskstar 1TB sata2.
Everything went uneventful and was running smoothly. This was supposed to be my primary HDD as my previous HDD was running hot for my liking and had a much smaller capacity.

(BTW the clean install of win7 was on the drive C partition, while the drive D partition was intended for all backup office data)

the issue here was a black screen and a flashing cursor on the upper left sceen of my monitor, i can't boot into windows whatsoever.

i had posted a ticket for this particular issue. they replied that i might have a corrupted mbr record and provided me a procedure to reset MBR. (and posted a link ~ How to repair MBR on Windows 7 | eHow.com )

okay i'll just recap:

1. new HDD 1TB - 2 partitions - c for win - d for backup
2. installed win 7 on c (flawless and much quicker than my old HDD)
3. installed ESET nod 32, ACAD, 3DS max (no probs at all)
4. installed RBRX (no probs)
5. updated windows (no probs)
6. installed adobe CS4 (no probs)
7. saved a lot of office data on drive d by booting into my xp setup on my other HDD (and thus my new HDD was the secondary). i filled the new empty drive d with almost 550GB of data from my 2 older HDDs
8. reboot from my new HDD and bam black screen.

i read somewhere to go to sub console and system setting and tried
usestd=1/0 mouse=0/1 nothing happened

tried to rollback to a previous snapshot -- still the same, can't boot
i also can't boot to the windows safemode menu, only that black screen

i followed the procedure provided by the supoort. run from win 7 cd, go to command prompt typed in bootsect /nt60 sys -----> it said was successful
but the same thing occured blank black screen with flashing cursor. i was worried because this is a new HDD and was running fine before the backup. And also i have reformatted both of the 2 older HDDs after tranferring (not the win xp HDD)

i figured RBRX might be causing the problem so i thought, maybe i should just reformat drive c and reinstall windows 7, because i can't boot into windows to uninstall the software completely

i was pretty frustrated to do this again, but i did reformat C drive.
i was preparing to install win 7, but it just went into sub console again.
then i remembered i couldn't uninstall RBRX because it was also in my MBR

so i tried uninstall from the sub console to my current system. still the same

THE BIG PROBLEM

i boot into my win xp (other HDD) only to find out that all the partitions in my new HDD is now RAW, corrupt and unaccessible and had 0 bytes.

I WAS SHOCKED because it erased all data on my drive d (i didn't reformat drive d). what is happening? what is wrong? did i messed it up(i know i'm very cautious with my HDDs)? how do i recover my data on drive D?

I REALLY NEED TO RECOVER OFFICE DATA FROM DRIVE D (550GB) BY MONDAY
OR I'M BETTER DEAD

do i really have to use testdisk / easyrecover (i've never tried them) or is this just a wrong setting which i can probably fix it quickly?

this thread is long but it is also how it happened chronologically.

Any help is appreciated. i thank u

[HDS-Jacob]

Hello chivas,

Thank you for taking the time to share in such detail. Let's see if we can get some suggestions for you.

Best,
Jacob

[Owl]

Two questions:

1. What are the sizes of the c and d partitions?

2. Did you set RBRx to cover both partitions or just c?

[chivas]

Hi Owl,

1.the size of partition c is 420GB and d is 580GB

2.i'm not too sure about it, because i was busy installing programs and backing up files. But i'm sure i installed RBrx typically and there wasn't any problems until the second day.

Please tell me i didn't mess up partition d...
i did follow the procedures (provided by support) for a corrupt MBR , but it didn't help.

UPDATE:
There wasn't many programs that i installed prior to the installation of RBRX so i'm pretty convinced that the black screen and flashing cursor was caused by RBRX. i couldn't remove the program because i couldn't boot into windows at all.

i did an error check for that drive using HDTune and there weren't any errors (i thought so because it's new)

but now all the three partitions (partition C,D and the one win 7 create for system) are RAW, 0 bytes and unaccessible.

i think the MBR is really corrupt now
tried [x:>sources>bootsect /nt60 sys] using win7 system disk - wasn't successful.

What do i do now?

main priorities for me is
1. getting back data from d
2. really clean the HDD to make it like new again (i mean everything incld boot sector ,MBR, windows, RBRX console) - normal formatting doesn't help clean the RBRX sub console.

i'm thinking erase boot sector from the hitachi software utiliy,

page 21 of this pdf
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/suppor..._Guide_415.pdf

and also Low level formatting but i haven't any experience with it and i don't know how long it would take to format 1TB.

What do you think?

This is really an emergency for me, so any help is appreciated. thanks

[nexstar]

Hi Chivas,

Sorry about your problems. I guess the important thing first is to get access to the data if possible. You could try a partition recovery tool like the one here. I've used it before and it worked for me. It is free and probably worth a go if it can 'see' your drive ok.

There's also this one which I seem to remember worked ok as well. It is commercial but there is a demo. I'm not sure what the demo limitations are for partition recovery.

Graham

[Owl]

I'm afraid I'm not going to be of much practical help, except to point out to the readership in general what I think you SHOULDN'T have done. Trying to cure something without being there in person is a virtual impossibility.

If the D: data has just "disappeared" as opposed to there having been a concerted effort to overwrite it (that would take a very long time), I guess it is a case of the FAT or partition table being corrupted, so it should be possible to restore it somehow. I make copious notes when partitioning discs, and with that data I can restore the partition table if it becomes necessary. Nexstar's suggestions seem sensible and I can offer no better.

Now for the beating:

1. You say you loaded 550GB of data onto a 580GB partition??? Don't you think that is sailing rather close to the wind? The general opinion is to RBRx the OS partition only, not the data, so that you can still see the data if accessed from outside the OS/RBRx environment and also so that rolling back to solve an OS problem does not affect your data. RBRx really gets unhappy if it runs out of room to do its thing (but not half as unhappy as CTM!!), so if you did allow it to "protect" all partitions instead of just C: it would have complained soon if not immediately.

2. You only did this a couple of days ago. Why is the original source of data not still available as a backup? Don't tell me you erased the source drives before you had another backup???

3. Never wise to do anything of this magnitude in a hurry. Been there, done that, been bitten before. Glitches/malfunctions/finger-trouble do happen, and they happen more often when you are in a hurry. Never cut off your retreat.

Trying to recover your existing drive is going to take a lot of time and patience, and is not something to be panicky over. One false step and any chance of restoring access to the data that is presumably still there is blown. Presuming you were not so daft as to have committed item 2, your quickest solution would be to go get another drive and start again.

[Froggie]

Chivas, I would echo Nextar's recommendation. Acronis Disk Director has the ability to change the partition "type" in the partition record... this does not affect the data contained within (have done it many times). "RAW" is a type so with just a changes to NTFS you ought to be able to get access to the data contained within from an external data gatherer.