I encounter the same problem every time something goes wrong; where to find the right tool to fix whatever crisis has arisen, and do it quickly. Let me get into the meat of it post haste.
An aging Windows NT 3.51 server had crashed for no good reason, and needed to be looked at. It was an old IBM PC Server series 486 machine with 32 MB of RAM and three hard drives attached to an Adaptec 2940W controller. I was amazed this machine could keep up with anything, but that’s beside the point. On boot it was failing to initialize the 500 MB Fujitsu boot drive, so we were pooched. The problem was that the information on the other two drives was needed, an IBM 1 GB and a Seagate 2 GB. What to do?
I had a few options available, but none of them were pretty. It was past the point of retiring this machine; all the components were at least 6 years old. While the remaining hard drives were operational, the Seagate made a terrible racket that showed it wasn’t long for this world. I could add a new drive, install Windows Server and transfer the data, or I could move the two drives into a working machine and copy the files. I didn’t have a spare SCSI hard drive and the motherboard didn’t have any IDE connectors, so the first option was out. I couldn’t bring my only NT server down long enough to hook up the drives, so that left me nowhere.
I figured it would be easiest to hook up the Adaptec card into a Windows 95 machine with the two hard drives and copy the information over the network that way. Of course the drives were formatted with NTFS, so Windows 95 wouldn’t recognize them. I thought, cleverly, that I would convert the drives with Partition Magic to FAT32 and then copy the files. Unfortunately the machine would almost get into the program from it’s boot disks and then reboot the machine. Without the Adaptec controller installed it loaded no problem. I fiddled for a while but came up empty handed.
My final act of desperation was to zip over to www.download.com and www.zdnet.com/downloads to search for NTFS. The led me to two finds, both from Winternals: NTFS Win and NTFS DOS. The Windows product was my first pick, but it only let you read from the NTFS drives; the Professional version let’s you read and write, but that costs money! My company won’t pay for anything useful like that. This led me to product two: NTFS DOS.
What is it, you ask? Unzipped, it’s three files totaling 77 kb: an executable, a VXD and a text file. After perusing the text file, I found out the way to read and write in Windows is to load the executable at startup through the autoexec.bat file, and that would load the VXD on Windows boot up. After doing so I was greeted by two new drives in Windows Explorer. I proceeded to copy the files I need and be done with the entire episode.
To back track a bit, I am familiar with Winternals and it’s sister site of free software, Systernals. Loaded with goodies, it’s a great resource for all Windows users, but particularly for Windows NT users. I highly recommend a look see to everyone, and for system administrators or help desk personnel the Winternals software packages are well worth the money. As long as your company is paying, that is.
March 23rd, 2001
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
