How To Erase 2nd Drive's Bogus GPT, And Restore Origional MBR
Apr 4, 2012
A buggy drive management tool erased my SECOND (not boot) hard drive's MBR and replaced it with a completely bogus and useless GPT.My actual partitions should be intact, and I am optimistic that partition recovery tools would be able to find them and restore the original partition table. However, they won't work, as long as the drive is identified as a GPT disk
I have a failed hard drive that I'd like to send back to get replaced but obviously want all my data wiped first. The problem is that the drive has failed so miserably that it won't even mount to any system in order to perform any sort of wiping. I've connected it to my system directly, via a USB to IDE adapter, and via an eSATA adapter in both Windows and Linux to no avail. Sometimes it will show up in the Device Manager under Hard Drives, but that's as far as it gets - it's never assigned a letter and doesn't show up in Disk Manager. It doesn't show up in Ubuntu when I perform an fdisk either so I can't perform a DD.
This is a bit of a catch 22 as the hard drive has failed to the point where it can't be read, but I'm not sure what measures are going to be employed to attempt to validate and read the data at the manufacturer when they test it for failure. If the drive all of a sudden starts working, there is too much personal data on there for me to just hope doesn't turn up.
I have a dell dimension 9100. I have two drives on it, a ~160gb drive that came with it with xp, and a 500gb drive with win7. I put the win7 in myself and had been using that. Finally, I decided to erase the old drive with xp on to install linux on it. After erasing the old drive, my computer won't start up. It says it cant find sata 1 or 3. I've tried switching the cables hooking up to it but that doesn't help. If I push continue after it tells me how it can't find them, it says 'loading pbr for descriptor 2...done' and stays there. I did not erase windows 7,
i was wondering if anyone has any programs they could recommend to use to wipe a hard drive clean before reinstalling windows 7, I noticed you have this CCleaner 3 link on here CCleaner - Download.com If i put that on a disk and started it up as i would to reinstall can that wipe the disk clean?
I intend to sell my computer soon, but before doing so I'd like to clear the hard drive and remove all my personal data. I've done a bit of research on the topic and found a few programs (DBAN, Eraser) that seem to do this. I'm not exactly sure which program is best though, or what exactly they do. I would also like to reinstall Windows 7 after erasing the hard drive. However, my copy of Windows 7 is an upgrade from the computer's original OS, Windows Vista. The computer didn't come with any system recovery or OS install disks so I'm not sure how to boot and install and OS after erasing everything. Will I be able to just put in the Windows 7 upgrade disk and install it? (I can't imagine it could be that simple, but who knows!) I do kind of remember a "clean install option" when I upgraded - would that be the same as clearing the hard drive and reinstalling?
I am trying to completely erase everything from my hard drive (windows are not installed on that hard drive). So is everything deleted by going to the hard drive and right click -> format? or does this do what a regular Windows 7 format does? I mean to completely erase all hidden files that can be restored and such.
I get a popup widow for damn near every program on my computer after a recent virus attack the gave me continious bogus security warnings.I'm 99.9 percent sure I've killed off the virus but now I can only access some files by right-clicking and selecting "Run as Administrator". I've tried downloading the files I need to repair my Windows 7 Home Pro Pro but I can't get it to run.I'm waiting on a 2-disc package from Asus that contains Windows 7 but I really don't want to loose all of the data on my harddrive.
Does malware/viruses take advantage of file associations to do their dirty work? I have a utility that can delete unwanted associations, but what about those entries that are unknown, can't be identified, or suspicious? Is there any list like on your helpful default file association page that can identify bogus entries? I upgraded from Vista to Windows 7.
Some folders in my computer are blocked as in i cannot modify their content only read them.When accessing the security tab it shows that my user (which is suppose to be the only one on the computer) has limited access and some users which i consider bogus (they have names like S-347373-26262 etc.) have full accessTried formatting they are still there
I was lucky to grab a recent image backup from a failing 1.5 TB drive. Can I restore it to a smaller drive if the available space on the original drive was well below 1TB?This is the first time ive had to work with this particular image file. I have restored from backups before, just not this type of image.
My c: is 128 GB and darn near full. I have Win7 and most used programs on it. My b: (179 GB of 500) has my libraries and less used programs. I have a single windows image backup of both B & C on an external drive.
For example if I purchase a 500 GB hard drive can I restore that image to the new drive? Will it partition the C from the B on the new drive or just show it as seperate folders?
Does the new drive have to be greater than the sum of the allocated/unallocated space on both drives even though the image is less than 500GB?
I have an Asus Eee PC 1005-PE netbook. After dealing with Win7 Starter for a while, I formatted the drive and installed Ubuntu instead. But I decided I needed Windows still, so I dual-booted Windows 7 Pro and Ubuntu, since I get a Win7 Pro key for free from my university. I'm trying to sell the netbook now, and I want to erase my data but keep the OS (I don't need to keep Ubuntu on it, just Windows). I would just erase the whole disk and re-install the OS, but I don't have the product key anymore, and product-key retrievals I've tried haven't been able to give it to me for some reason.
The erase a cd/dvd in windows 7 pro doesn't seem to work for me. So I use a program called "erase dvd". After erasing with this program I go to "computer" and right click on DVD. Then I right click on properties. Most of the time it shows as not having erased the dvd. By shutting down the computer and restarting I then get the correct figures.
I have a hard drive I want to backup to a 64gb flash drive and then restore it to another different hard drive than where it came from. I have windows 7 and office on my laptop and I want it on my desktop pc. There isn't close to 64gb of info on my laptop so it should be fine even though the hard drive says I have 160gb. It is all free space except for those programs.
I copied some files from a DVD that was having some reading errors to my pendrive. Somehow, a few files have strange characters at the end of the file name. I cannot rename or erase this files from my pendrive. Each time I try, I have this error message: "The file name you specified is not valid or too long. Specify a different name."
I've got a 3TB HDD. So far I had it in my desktop(Win 7 Ultimate 64bit). I made backup copies of my dvd collection on it. Now.I decided to move the HDD to a Sahrkoon mobile rack. I pluged the rack into my laptop (Win 7 Home premium 64bit). It did not show up in the explorer and it asked for initialisation. On the first screen it asked to choose from MBR and GTP as it was a brand new HDD. I chose GTP as I did befor, but still did not show up in the explorer, it wants me to create a new volume. I did not do that.
So here are my queations: Did I erase my data by doing this? How can I get them back and make my laptop see my hdd?
Is it recommended to use the Secure Erase, often ? Once in 2 months ?Before i do the Fw update, should i Secure Erase ?i want to make a fresh install of Windows 7, today. Should i use Secure Erase before that, or not ?
One of my computers has a virus. I want to erase all the information from that computer (computer A) and replace it with the information from my other computer (computer B) is this possible. They both run windows 7 but they are two different computers...
I format a write-once disc (UDF format) but it write something to it (about 137 MB) so when i try to create a system repair disc it says 'disk is not blank- erase disc', but as it is a DVD+R i cannnot erase anything on it.What does Windows write to the Disk?
I have a tosiba laptop L755-5256 with no OS and need to erase hard drive completely first. then I need to flash bios from a 3.5 to 3.6 to set up for a new OS install.
If I set a SSD drive to "Non-Raid" from RAID will it erase the disk? The SSD has all my stuff on it windows 7, the works. SSD won't boot b/c it says it's part of RAID and it's not.
Half of the time when I try to use a RW disc more than once. In other words erase the disc to burn something new to it. Windows explorer (not responding error) is in a malfunction loop. Also during this occurrence the dvd is rendered useless for future use. These discs are new and clean with no scratches. I bought two dvd multi drives. They are identical and installed drive D: & E:. Purchased at newegg, they are sold as Liteon brand. Software identifies them as ATAPI iHAS124 B. I have thought about downloading new drivers however I have had some trouble identifying this model on Liteon's website. The other half of the time I attempt to use my DVD-RW's the event is successful.
System Restore will not create a restore point or restore to a previous date & time.The error message was: A restore point could not be created: An error was detected in the Volume Shadow Copy Server (VSS).The problem occurred while trying to contact VSS writers. Verify that the Event System Sevice and the VSS service are running & check for associated errors in the event logs (0x80042318).Volume Shadow Copy is started & running (done in system events).Event System Sevice and the VSS service are started and running. But no cigar, SR still broken.