[ltp] Rescue and Recovery data destroyer

[Jiang Qian]

Did you check out this link?
http://sharadware.com/2005/07/11/suse-linux-winxp-access-ibm-on-the-thinkpad-t43/#comment-165
Using it I can still boot rescue and recovery with GRUB installed on my 
MBR. Just the access IBM button doesn't work anymore, but R&R shows up 
as a bootable partition you can choose and boot from GRUB menu. The 
trick seems to be setting the R&R partition from "compaq diagonistic" 
to FAT. 

My understanding is that IBM set it to be so to mislead windows so that 
XP doesn't mount the partition and therefore viruses or stupid users 
won't mess up the backup. It's done by bios.

Here's the non-linux part of my GRUB configuration:

# on /dev/sda2
title		IBM Rescue and Recovery
root		(hd0,1)
parttype	(hd0,1) 0x0b
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader	+1


# on /dev/sda1
title		Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root		(hd0,0)
parttype	(hd0,1) 0x12
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader	+1

Try this out! It involves non of the scary MBR manipulation. Just 
several lines in the grub configuration files and you can always change 
it back anytime.
Jiang

On Wed, Jan 25, 2006 at 02:14:19AM +0100, Vaclav Stepan wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I played a little with boot sector and the things around 
> the hidden partition on an R50e. Although interesting,
> it resulted in full data loss.
> 
> I just hope this may save somebody doing the same mistakes.
> 
> There were XP preinstalled and recovery partition at the
> end. I wanted dual-boot with recovery partition kept intact.
> This was fairly easy - I deleted the Windows partition, 
> put there new ones - one big for Windows, one big for Linux,
> one for shared data and let the R&R from the hidden 
> partition recover the factory configuration (which left 
> the Linux partition intact).
> 
> Everything in the archives said, that if you install boot-loader
> into MBR, you won't be able to use the hidden partition any
> more. Ok, I installed GRUB at the beginning of the Linux partition
> and set up NT loader to do the dual-booting.
> 
> This had beed working great... ...except if I needed to switch
> between the systems, I did a sw suspend in Linux (few seconds)
> and then had to wait a minute or two for Windows to start.
> That was annoying :-)
> 
> GRUB found two more bootable partitions - the Windows partition
> and the R&R partition at the end of the disk. Wow. Shouldn't
> it be possible to put GRUB to MBR and simply boot R&R that way?
> 
> I tried booting R&R using GRUB from the Linux partition.
> It worked fine. I did a backup of MBR using dd (but just of the
> first sector, which was the first mistake) and installed grub
> to MBR using 'setup (hd0)' from the GRUB shell.
> 
> Well --- it didn't work. Although Windows and Linux were fine,
> R&R fails with a mysterious error:
> STOP c000021a {Fatal System Error}
> The Session Manager Initialization process terminated unexpectedly.
> 0xc000003a.
> 
> So the R&R tools check the MBR for some reason - possibly
> there are some diagnostic data stored there?
> I copied the original MBR back and found that now the machine
> does not boot at all. Even better.
> 
> I thought - well, you did a backup using the fantastic R&R today,
> it won't hurt to try the recovery procedure. Maybe this will
> recover the MBR by the way too.
> 
> I started the R&R from CD and told it to do recovery from backup
> from a CD/DVD. Fine - it asked whether I wan't to delete files
> that were created or changed since the last backup before extracting
> the backup data. I thought about it a moment and chose yes, as
> it seemed reasonable - it shouldn't touch other partitions, should it?
> 
> Well - a PQI window appeared stating something like ,,deleting partition
> and so on''. It weeped the partition table and I hold the power button
> until off.
> 
> After reboot the partition table was damaged - just the first Windows
> partition and R&R left there, both non-working.
> 
> I let testdisk find the partitions and repaired the partition table.
> However, the Windows partition was unusable.
> I restarted the recovery process (stating I do NOT want to delete
> the changed files). It wonderfully recovered the Windows partition
> (not the hidden one) and filled the rest of partition table with
> pure garbage (disks up to H:, all unformatted). So the Linux partition
> was lost and this time unrecoverably (partly overwritten) and the
> R&R partition is not bootable. Fortunately, the shared-data partition
> was left intact (although I had to rescue it using testdisk).
> 
> Has anybody succesfully and non-destructively used the Rescue
> and Recovery for rescuing just one of the partitions from backup?
> 
> Uf. That's it.
> 
> Vaclav Stepan
> -- 
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