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Re: Partition access in Windows
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Partition access in Windows
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androsynth
Byte
Posts: 8
Registered: 11-03-2009
Message 1 of 13
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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
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11-03-2009 09:02 AM
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Re: Partition access in Windows
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androsynth
Byte
Posts: 8
Registered: 11-03-2009
Message 3 of 13
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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.
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11-04-2009 10:22 AM
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Re: Partition access in Windows
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androsynth
Byte
Posts: 8
Registered: 11-03-2009
Message 4 of 13
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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
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11-05-2009 08:26 AM
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Re: Partition access in Windows
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fzabkar
Terabyte
Posts: 699
Registered: 01-27-2009
Message 5 of 13
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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?
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11-05-2009 07:05 PM
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Re: Partition access in Windows
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androsynth
Byte
Posts: 8
Registered: 11-03-2009
Message 6 of 13
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K Here is LBA 53919 : http://rapidshare.com/files/303372790/Sector00.dsk Also my bad on the disk size : its 5GB and not 10GB.
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11-06-2009 02:59 PM
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Re: Partition access in Windows
[ Edited ]
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androsynth
Byte
Posts: 8
Registered: 11-03-2009
Message 8 of 13
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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
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11-07-2009 06:51 AM
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Re: Partition access in Windows
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androsynth
Byte
Posts: 8
Registered: 11-03-2009
Message 10 of 13
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Thanks for this, much appreciated. Will have a go at this hopefully tonight after work, ill post back my results a.s.a.p.
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11-09-2009 06:41 AM
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