Hard Drive is read only....help

[angryInch]

Hope somebody can help me with a strange problem I am having.

At the moment the problem is that Windows XP (I have a dual boot and this is the only one I can access) mounts one of my hard drives as read only. I believe this is down to the fact that there seams to be a problem with the MFT on the Vista partition of this hard drive.

I'll go through how I got to this situation!

I used Acronis Disk Commander to create some free space on my hard drive so that I could install Fedora Core 8. However during the installation of Fedora disk druid was not able to use the hard space, though this was strange I just accepted it and booted back up to windows and used Disk Commander to create a 40Gb extfs partition (mounted as ‘/’) and a 4Gb Linux swap partition. When I again tried to install Linux (selecting the’/’ partition in disk druid) it warned me that there was a problem with the drive and it would have to erase all data. Stupidly I said Yes (it was late and night and I should have been paying more attention), and immediately realising the stupidity of what I had done I rebooted. Lo and behold my partitions were gone.

Handily I had a version of Ultimate boot disk at hand, so using TestDisk I recovered the partition table, wrote the recovered table to the MBR and then rebuilt the corrupted BootSector on my Vista drive (the first and active partition on the drive I had formatted). However it still would not boot up (even though the MBR was fine, as it got to the screen offering me the choice of XP or Vista). I then tried to repair it with the Vista install disk, but that failed.

Luckily my XP partition is on a different drive, so I altered the bois so that the XP drive was the fist drive to be booted and managed to successfully boot into XP. Now here is were I have a problem that I can’t seam to fix.

XP seams to be mounting the problem drive (the one I recovered the partition table on) in read-only (write-protected) mode, and none of the NTFS partition are showing up in ‘My Computer’ I then went to My Computer->Manage->Disk Management and the problem drive and all its partitions are listed there (all as healthy) as the screen shot below shows.

However, when I assign a drive letter to any of the drive’s, although it assigns it properly I still cannot see the drive in ‘My Computer’, however I can access the drives contents by right-clicking on them in ‘Disk Management’ and clicking open, I can also access them through Command Prompt. I think the reason that I cannot access them through ‘My Computer’ is because it is mounted read-only the assigned drive letters won’t ‘stick’.

My next idea was to do a chkdsk, the result of which was:

I:\>chkdsk

The type of the file system is NTFS.

Volume label is Windows Vista.

WARNING! F parameter not specified.

Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...

File verification completed.

CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...

Index verification completed.

CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...

Security descriptor verification completed.

CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...

Usn Journal verification completed.

Correcting errors in the uppercase file.

CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the

master file table (MFT) bitmap.

Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.

Windows found problems with the file system.

Run CHKDSK with the /F (fix) option to correct these.

31138615 KB total disk space.

29424556 KB in 137010 files.

67488 KB in 20224 indexes.

0 KB in bad sectors.

265343 KB in use by the system.

65536 KB occupied by the log file.

1381228 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.

7784653 total allocation units on disk.

345307 allocation units available on disk.

Great, so that’s the problem, then I ran a ‘chkdsk /F’, the result of which was

I:\>chkdsk /F

The type of the file system is NTFS.

Cannot lock current drive.

Windows cannot run disk checking on this volume because it is write protected.

Now, I know that chkdsk /F cannot run while the drive is mounted by windows, however if I reboot and use the Windows XP disk to boot to a repair command prompt I cannot access this drive as it has no drive letter assigned to it (is there a way to manually mount a drive from here?).

I have tried assigning drive letters to the drive using Acronis Disk Commander, but as XP mount the drive read-only again the drive letters do not stick. Also I have rebuilt the BootSector and checked the MFT using TestDisk again, but the problem still remains.

This problem drive also contains 3 other partition (primary) which contain a lot of important information and also contains my ‘Program Files’ directory (I install all my programs to this drive instead of the usual C:/Program Files), so I really want to get it usable again. Since I can see and access all the partitions and information using ‘Disk Management’ I know that all the data is OK, I just need windows to stop mounting it read only. I think this read-only problem is the reason that the Vista Start-up Repair failed as it probably mounted the drive read-only as well.

Can anyone help me get this drive either mounted read/write in a repair console so that I can run chkdsk /F, or else mounted read/write in XP. I don’t mind losing my Vista partition (although as it seams to be structurally intact it should be fine to boot to still), but as I don’t have space to copy all the data on this drive to (it about 700Gb of data) I really need to make this disk read/write so I can use the data (epically my ‘Program Files’ directory).

I had a good look around the web but nothing helped….so any help here would be seriously appreciated.

[Tripredacus]

IIRC if you manually run CHKDSK in Windows, it runs as read-only. Standard mode is only available during the boot-up.

I've never used Acronis before, but only Partition Magic to create additional partitions.

[angryInch]

IIRC if you manually run CHKDSK in Windows, it runs as read-only. Standard mode is only available during the boot-up.

I've never used Acronis before, but only Partition Magic to create additional partitions.

Now, I know that chkdsk /F cannot run while the drive is mounted by windows, however if I reboot and use the Windows XP disk to boot to a repair command prompt I cannot access this drive as it has no drive letter assigned to it (is there a way to manually mount a drive from here?).

Also even if its run from within windows it should ask if you want to run it on start-up. It does not even do this.

Somehow windows is blocking access to this drive, presumably to protect the file system, however I can find no information on how windows does this or how to reverse it.

[spacesurfer]

You may want to set a dirty bit so that C: is scanned on startup. At command prompt, type:

fsutil dirty set C:

.

See fsutil

[Kotuku]

Is there anything on the Acronis forum on this? I gave up that program a few versions back after it trashed my drive. Some swear by it, others hate it.

Can you remove and hook the drive up to another computer to recover the data? Any PC shop will do that for you. What about booting to a Linux disk to recover data?

There are specific programs out there for locking drive letters, if you Google for that.

[jaclaz]

Also, IF I am correct in my guess that the booted XP is NOT on the problematic drive, something that you can try (from a DOS bootdisk or CD) is to wipe the Disk Signature in the MBR, or, if it works in your "peculiar" situation under the booted XP, use MBRFIX:

http://www.sysint.no/nedlasting/mbrfix.htm

to actually change it.

Letters are assigned in \MountedDevices\ subkey in the Registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

"linked" to Disk Signature AND partition start/length, by changing disk signature you will render all "previous" drive lettering invalid and maybe will alow you to have drive lettering become "sticky".

Be VERY AWARE that if you change the Disk Signature of the BOOT drive, XP won't be able to boot from it.

Before EVEN THINKING of doing what above hinted, make sure to have read and FULLY understood these, even if some of the links seem not relevant, they are relevant :

http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/Win2kmbr.htm

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=19663

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=21242

I see (no offence intended ) that you like to play with matches, be very aware that a fire can start from these activities.

Even if you managed to get (almost) your data back, you should really consider buying, borrowing, stealing an additional hard drive and backup the data BEFORE going on, it is possible, and I'm afraid probable that by continuing to fiddle with partitions and data (and with Registry, which in your case should be the "culprit"), you may find yourself in a no-way-out condition.

jaclaz

[angryInch]

You may want to set a dirty bit so that C: is scanned on startup. At command prompt, type:

fsutil dirty set C:

.

See fsutil

I'll give this a try tonight, but as the drive letters will not stay assigned to the drive (as described in my original post), thus not allowing windows to see the dirty bit at startup, this probably won't work.

[angryInch]

Is there anything on the Acronis forum on this? I gave up that program a few versions back after it trashed my drive. Some swear by it, others hate it.

Can you remove and hook the drive up to another computer to recover the data? Any PC shop will do that for you. What about booting to a Linux disk to recover data?

There are specific programs out there for locking drive letters, if you Google for that.

Its nothing to do with Acronis, that just happens be the program that I originally used to partition the drive.

I can recevor the data as described in my original post, the problem is not reading from the drive its writing to it.

[angryInch]

Also, IF I am correct in my guess that the booted XP is NOT on the problematic drive, something that you can try (from a DOS bootdisk or CD) is to wipe the Disk Signature in the MBR, or, if it works in your "peculiar" situation under the booted XP, use MBRFIX:

http://www.sysint.no/nedlasting/mbrfix.htm

to actually change it.

As I said in my original post XP IS on a separate drive. (from original post: Luckily my XP partition is on a different drive, so I altered the BIOS so that the XP drive was the fist drive to be booted and managed to successfully boot into XP.)

The MBR is intact and pointing to the correct partitions, the problem is the MFT on the 1st partition.

Letters are assigned in \MountedDevices\ subkey in the Registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

"linked" to Disk Signature AND partition start/length, by changing disk signature you will render all "previous" drive lettering invalid and maybe will alow you to have drive lettering become "sticky".

I'll have a look at this tonight, however the problem is not that the drive letters are being assigned incorrectly, it is that they are not being assigned at all, and when I assign them manually through Disk Management they will not stay assigned.

Before EVEN THINKING of doing what above hinted, make sure to have read and FULLY understood these, even if some of the links seem not relevant, they are relevant :

http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/Win2kmbr.htm

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=19663

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=21242

I see (no offence intended ) that you like to play with matches, be very aware that a fire can start from these activities.

Looks like some good information in there, I'll read through it now. Yup, I like playing with matches alright, but to be honest I have a pretty good understanding of what I am doing (most of the time ). This all stemmed from me not paying attention during the Linux installation, I've given myself a good kick in the a** for that! I've just never heard of Windows blocking write access to a drive which it can mount and also see all partitions and data.

Even if you managed to get (almost) your data back, you should really consider buying, borrowing, stealing an additional hard drive and backup the data BEFORE going on, it is possible, and I'm afraid probable that by continuing to fiddle with partitions and data (and with Registry, which in your case should be the "culprit"), you may find yourself in a no-way-out condition.

Already done! I'm awaiting a 1Tb drive at the moment so that I can back up everything. I was buying this anyway to set up a RAID 1 array so I would always have a mirror of my data.

Anyway, thanks for your help, I'll report back on any progress (or lack thereof!)

Edited September 25, 2008 by angryInch

[jaclaz]

Another approach (just to run CHKDSK ), make yourself a Recovery Console CD or bootable stick:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=2254

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=5316

BTW, probably unrelated, but FYI, I just had proof that Acronis installs some "strange" upper/lower filters that may cause "strange" effects to accessing drives, see here:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=5736&st=32

jaclaz

[MaxFrax]

You are sure that your disc is not blocked from an option of the bios? Some bioses have an option for the selection "only read" and "R/W"