1 Topic by Tistoffa

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Topic: Had to abort operation, now disk read error, partitions intact.

I had the operation going for a few hours, I was creating a new partition whilst shrinking my main ntfs partition, and for some reason gparted allocated some unused space infront of the ntfs partition. Due to this the operation took 3 hours, my hdd is only 150gb. Anyway, when I came back after 3 hours most the operations for resizing and moving the ntfs to the right had completed,  there was a tick next to real move and the gparted was in the process of finishing a few final tasks before making the new partition, the next operation. Much to my horror though the gparted disk was whirring in the drive repeadly, and gparted was doing nothing. After a while I checked the dropdown menu of what it was doing and the whole interface crashed. I was forced to power it down and thus I now have a disk read error.

It's strange because when I go back into gparted now everything looks fine, all partitions are displaying correctly and when I do chkdsk on the ntfs it does the same few processes then completes in 15 seconds. Hp recovery refuses to work. I have a feeling all my files are still there but it won't boot properly. I have partitioned 30gb for an installation of windows 7 but I also want to be able to use my xp os.

Please help I don't think I can fully reformat and reboot the computer again, I don't have access to the hp recovery.

2 Reply by class413

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Re: Had to abort operation, now disk read error, partitions intact.

It is possible that something went wrong in the cdrom drive. In general, stopping a resizing operation isn't good, that's why we always recommend to take backup before proceeding.

Did you check if the partitions are still accessible? I mean, if the filesystem is good or damaged. You can check this using a Linux live cd like Knoppix, or a Linux distro installation cd (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc). These cds can boot the computer in live session (without installation) and access the partition content. They can even copy the files to another hard drive, internal or external.

Another idea is to use "Testdisk" to rebuild the partition table, if it was damaged or wasn't updated due to the crash. It comes on a live cd, and it is included in the GParted Livecd too (from the terminal window).

(moved to the live media section)

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

3 Reply by Tistoffa

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Re: Had to abort operation, now disk read error, partitions intact.

Hey. I just installed windows 7 (I had to set the windows 7 partition in gparted as the one to boot from if I had any chance of it working, but I'm pretty sure all of my files are intact, I have access to my old C drive (now dubbed E drive) and everything works fine. It's just XP that refuses to start.

4 Reply by Tistoffa

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Re: Had to abort operation, now disk read error, partitions intact.

As for testdisk I will definitely try this later today, at the moment though I'm really enjoying using windows 7 as my primary os, it's stable and compatible with every program I've tried so far. I want XP to work however. Would a simple reinstall of XP correct the disk read error??

5 Reply by class413

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Re: Had to abort operation, now disk read error, partitions intact.

A "read error" could come not only from a bad hard drive but from a defective controller or even a bad cable.

Perhaps the problem is only in the boot up of the operating system, not the main part of the system. You can try to fix it booting from a win xp cd and choosing the "recovery console". This is a special command-line mode, from where you have access to the system directories. There are a few commands that are usually needed:
fixboot, fixmbr, bootcfg

However, I'm afraid that you could loose the ability to boot into windows 7. I don't know any details about that system. In fact, you need to set up a dual boot with the 2 win versions. The usual path is to install first the older system and second the newer one. Perhaps the microsoft support database can give the solution. In any case, I would suggest a backup of the files, because a new install of the system can delete the partition or the drive. Many people lost data because the installer  messages weren't clear enough and the entire drive was formatted.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***