Savvio, Cheetah, and Constellation Enterprise Server & Storage (SCSI/FC/SAS/SATA) drives

[androsynth]

Hello,

Ok here goes.

I am a musician and one of the main machines I use to write with is an Akai MPC2000 sampler. I have it attached to a 10GB external Seagate SCSI drive. The info on the drive is as follows :

Drive Name: QUANTUM FIREBALLct1520  

Serial Number: 313021124001

Revision: A01.0F00

When i purchased this from a friend (around 1999) I partitioned it on the Akai sampler into 26 partitions ; one for each letter of the alphabet to make saving/loading easier to manage. I have pretty much filled it up with samples in the past ten years, and i really want to back up everything before the inevitable happens : hard disk failure. I have installed a SCSI card in a PC running Windows XP SP2 and have set up everything properly with drivers etc. Once i boot into Windows and access the external drive all i can see is the first partition, the letter "A" one. I was hoping someone on here might be able to guide me to a solution. Is there a way through command prompt to manually access/mount the other partitions? 

The only other solution I can see it backing up the "A" partition, erasing it, loading songs one by one from each lettered partition and repeating. This would seriously take months of my time lol.  So if anyone can help...im desperate!

thanks 

[fzabkar]

Win XP likes to write its own disc signature in the MBR, and it also writes a System Information Volume in the root directory. I don't know whether this could upset your sampler. :-(

I suspect that the Akai's OS uses a proprietary partitioning system. However, the fact that XP can see the first partition suggests that the file system is a standard one, maybe FAT16 or FAT32. If you r-click the drive's icon and select Properties, that should confirm it.

Before going any further, I would backup your Akai drive sector-by-sector to a single file on your Windows box. You could use a disc editor such as Linux's dd, or maybe Microsoft's DiskProbe. Then you could split this file into multipart 1GB segments using WinRAR, for example. These segments could then be backed up to a USB stick, or to DVD+/-R.

Can you upload an image of the first sector on your HD, ie LBA 0? This will contain the partition table and may point to the location of your extended partition.

DiskProbe (dskprobe.exe) is included in Windows XP Service Pack 2 Support Tools:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=49AE8576-9BB9-4126-9761-BA8011FABF38&displaylang=en

Here are some useful tech notes:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc736327(WS.10).aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457122.aspx

"You can also use DiskProbe to save MBRs and boot sectors"

[androsynth]

Wow fzabkar thanks so much.

As soon as i get home from work tonight ill grab the LBA 0 and upload it. Again thanks for pointing me the right direction. 

[androsynth]

Hey,

K back again. I grabbed an image of LBA 0.

Its here : http://www.rapidshare.com/files/302797520/Sector00.dsk

I hope this will help.

thnx 

[fzabkar]

Yes, that appears to be very helpful.

Here it is in text form:

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/MPC2000_mbr.txt

The MBR and partitioning system do appear to be proprietary, but AFAICS it will only require 25 passes to retrieve your data. Of course I'm assuming that you were able to backup all the sound samples from partition A.

Please allow me to explain my reasoning. I'm not a programmer, so if there are any flaws in my reasoning, someone watching this thread may hopefully point them out.

According to these references ...

http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/asm/mbr/PartTables.htm#pte

http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/asm/mbr/PartTables3.htm#20GBpt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record

... your disc's sector 0 has only one partition.

Partition A:
00 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 19 39 05 00

Partition A is not active (ie not bootable), and has a type ID of 04.

This ID is usually associated with "16-bit FAT, partition; of sizes less than 32 MB":

http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/asm/mbr/PartTypes.htm

The starting LBA is 0x00000000, and the partition size is 0x00053919 sectors.

A standard MS partition would have a starting LBA of 0x0000003F, ie sector 63. So the layout would be as follows:

MBR & partition table - sector 0
62 blank sectors
Boot sector of partition A - sector 63
FAT #1
FAT #2
Root directory
Data

However, in your case the boot sector and partition table are one and the same, ie they both occupy sector 0.

So the layout for the MPC2000 is as follows:

MBR & partition table & Boot sector of partition A - sector 0
FAT #1
FAT #2
Root directory
Data

If we examine the data in the boot sector beginning at offset 0x44, it appears that they may represent the starting LBAs (in hexadecimal) for each of your additional partitions.

Partition B - 00053919
Partition C - 000A7232
Partition D - 000FAB4B
Partition E - 0014E464
...
Partition Z - 00829371

If my interpretation of the file system is correct, then I believe one way to retrieve your files from partition B would be to use your disc tool to clone LBAs 00053919 - 000A7231 to a USB flash drive or to another hard drive. That is, LBA 00053919 would be written to LBA 0 of your spare drive, LBA 0005391A to LBA 1, and so on. Then you would mount the cloned partition using Windows. Hopefully Windows will see it as another FAT16 partition and be able to access your files. Then you would repeat the procedure for the remaining partitions.

Alternatively, you could copy LBAs 00053919 - 000A7231 to an IMG file on your Windows box, and then look for a utility that could extract the individual files. I know that WinImage can extract files from a floppy image. Perhaps it can do the same for a HD image.

See http://www.winimage.com/

Just one thing that bothers me. If partition Z is the same size as the others, then it appears that your 26 partitions only occupy about 4GB of your drive. Am I correct?

Before proceeding with the above, I would first confirm that LBA 53919 is actually a boot sector. It would need to look similar to LBA 0. Could you upload it, too?

[androsynth]

K Here is LBA 53919 : 

http://rapidshare.com/files/303372790/Sector00.dsk

Also my bad on the disk size : its 5GB and not 10GB. 

[fzabkar]

That's not a boot sector. :-(

Did you perhaps interpret the number "53919" in decimal rather than hexadecimal?

0x53919 (hexadecimal) = 342297 (decimal)

If LBA 342297 is a boot sector, then I believe I may be able to automate the partition extraction process for you.

BTW, the boot sector at LBA 0 is indeed a FAT16 boot sector. The volume name is SEAGATE, and the volume serial number is 0000-0000.

Here is an online hexadecimal calculator/converter:

http://www.mrcalculator.com/hexdec.html

The following utility will allow you to copy whole partitions as IMG files. I'll provide an automated batch procedure in my next post.

dd for Windows:

http://www.chrysocome.net/dd

[androsynth]

fzabkar,

Ok I now know how to use a hex editor   please excuse my ultra-noobness here...

You are correct with the partition locations!

I opened 00053919 (partition B) and 000A7232 (partition C) and they both contain the text "MPC2000" starting at offset 0x003. 

Here is the "real" LBA 00053919 image :  

http://www.rapidshare.com/files/303648892/Sector00.dsk

I think im understanding what your talking about now. You want to make a bat file that runs with dd to automate dumping each partition so i dont have to manually enter the address locations 26 times right?

Again, thank you so much for taking the time to do all this. If you ever are in Montreal beers are on me!! 

Message Edited by androsynth on 11-07-2009 06:53 AM

[fzabkar]

Here is my attempt at an automated procedure:

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/mpc2k.bat

You would need to run it from the same folder where dd.exe exists. I'm assuming that you have 5GB of free space available on drive C:, and I'm assuming that your Quantum drive is the second hard drive. The batch creates a folder named MPC2K on your C: drive and copies each Quantum partition as a separate IMG file. Hopefully WinImage can extract the individual files. If not, it will still be possible, but it will take a little extra work.

Please use the following command to confirm the device names before you begin:

dd --list

BTW, I have never used dd, so please examine the batch and decide for yourself whether it is safe.

[androsynth]

Thanks for this, much appreciated. 

Will have a go at this hopefully tonight after work, ill post back my results a.s.a.p.

[fzabkar]

Just one more thing.

It would be a coincidence if your drive's capacity were exactly divisible by 26, so I'm wondering whether partition Z may be slightly larger than A-Y.

You could verify this by looking at the boot sector for Z. Offsets 0x23, 0x22, 0x21, and 0x20 would store the partition size, 0x20 being the low byte. You would then need to convert this number into decimal, and modify the appropriate "count" term in the batch.

The other thing that bugs me is your description of the drive as a Quantum LCT1520. AFAICT, the Fireball lct15 series was ATA, not SCSI, and the smallest member of the family had a capacity of 7.5GB:

http://web.tiscali.it/simalsms/Quantum_LCT15.pdf

Not that it makes any difference to the batch procedure, but are you sure you don't have a Seagate 4.55GB drive?

[androsynth · Accepted solution]

fzabkar,

Your bat file worked perfectly....all 26 partitions dumped without a problem.

I ended up mounting all the IMG files in OSX using Toast Titanium. 

Again, thank you so much for all your help. You saved me ALOT of headaches. 

-androsynth 

[androsynth]

As far as the drive goes, 

I just downloaded a tiny little app off the seagate site to identify the drive. The info that i posted was just what was listed in the app, so im not sure, maybe it was wrong.