How to Recover Partitions from Boot Failure Affected Mirrored Drives
Allen Sood
August 19, 2009
In Microsoft Windows based computer, when the boot process fails on a system with mirrored boot drive, and failure is resulted by an issues that has struck both mirror and primary partitions, such as corrupt or bad device drivers or other system changes, using the Fault Tolerance device doesn't enable you to boot the system.
This situation occurs because both of the drives have same problem. In these cases, the system can not boot up and your Windows hard drive partitions become inaccessible, causing partition loss. At this point, it becomes essential to go for Partition Recovery to overcome this problem.
In such circumstances, the general process is to boot your system to an alternative OS, such as any other installation of Windows operating system or MS DOS, and use this for possible Partition Recovery. However, if the boot drive is mirrored, this process is not feasible, unless the mirror in manually broken.
How to manually break the mirror
In order to break the mirror, you need to use the Disk Editor to alter the Windows partition table and byte, which suggests the type of partition. You could use third party utilities to carry out this operation. In Microsoft Windows, the partition table is stored in first physical sector of hard drive.
The Windows partition entries begin at an offset. On the mirrored drive, the partition entry bye is either 0x87 (for NTFS file system partition) or 0x86 (for FAT file system partition). This byte requires to be modified to 0x07 (NTFS file system partition) or 0x06 (FAT file system partition. To do so, you are required to use a third party disk editor tool.
Although, using the disk editor is helpful in resolving such situation in most of the cases, but it should be used only as last resort. Using the disk editor to directly modify the information on hard drive is unsafe and could cause further drive corruption if this is not performed appropriately. When it happens, carrying out recovery of lost partitions through Partition Recovery Software becomes need of hour.
These applications are specifically designed to throughly scan entire hard drive using advanced scanning algorithms and retrieve all of the lost Windows partitions. The Partition Recovery Software are quite easy to use and do not require high technical skills to achieve absolute recovery.
Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is the most comprehensive and robust tool to provide assured recovery of lost Windows hard drive partitions. This software recovers FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file system partitions. It is compatible with Microsoft Windows 7 RC1, Vista, 2003, XP and 2000.
This situation occurs because both of the drives have same problem. In these cases, the system can not boot up and your Windows hard drive partitions become inaccessible, causing partition loss. At this point, it becomes essential to go for Partition Recovery to overcome this problem.
In such circumstances, the general process is to boot your system to an alternative OS, such as any other installation of Windows operating system or MS DOS, and use this for possible Partition Recovery. However, if the boot drive is mirrored, this process is not feasible, unless the mirror in manually broken.
How to manually break the mirror
In order to break the mirror, you need to use the Disk Editor to alter the Windows partition table and byte, which suggests the type of partition. You could use third party utilities to carry out this operation. In Microsoft Windows, the partition table is stored in first physical sector of hard drive.
The Windows partition entries begin at an offset. On the mirrored drive, the partition entry bye is either 0x87 (for NTFS file system partition) or 0x86 (for FAT file system partition). This byte requires to be modified to 0x07 (NTFS file system partition) or 0x06 (FAT file system partition. To do so, you are required to use a third party disk editor tool.
Although, using the disk editor is helpful in resolving such situation in most of the cases, but it should be used only as last resort. Using the disk editor to directly modify the information on hard drive is unsafe and could cause further drive corruption if this is not performed appropriately. When it happens, carrying out recovery of lost partitions through Partition Recovery Software becomes need of hour.
These applications are specifically designed to throughly scan entire hard drive using advanced scanning algorithms and retrieve all of the lost Windows partitions. The Partition Recovery Software are quite easy to use and do not require high technical skills to achieve absolute recovery.
Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is the most comprehensive and robust tool to provide assured recovery of lost Windows hard drive partitions. This software recovers FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file system partitions. It is compatible with Microsoft Windows 7 RC1, Vista, 2003, XP and 2000.