How to Recover From a STOP 0x00000058 FTDISK_INTERNAL_ERROR

• Microsoft Windows NT Server versions 3.5, 3.51, and 4.0

SUMMARY

The following STOP error message appears when you start Windows NT:

   STOP: 0x00000058
   FTDISK_INTERNAL_ERROR

MORE INFORMATION

If for any reason your primary operating system drive fails or goes off-line while in a raid level-1 mirrored configuration, Windows NT continues to run from the mirrored drive and flags the registry hives on the current drive to reflect the broken mirror.

If you perform a normal shutdown at this point, revive the primary operating system drive, and then perform a normal boot, the STOP:0x58 FTDISK_INTERNAL_ERROR error message appears.

Windows NT uses this protection mechanism because processing continued on the shadow drive while the primary drive was off-line. Any data saved to the shadowed drive would be lost if you were permitted to boot from the primary drive again.

To guard against data loss and fully recover from the STOP error message above:

1. Using a Windows NT Fault Tolerance boot floppy disk, boot from the mirrored (secondary) system drive.

1. Run Disk Administrator. Notice that the primary operating system disk partition is red, indicating that the mirror is broken. Notice that the primary drive will show the drive letter "C:". It must be changed to a new drive letter by breaking the mirror.

2. Using Disk Administrator, officially break the mirror:

   a. Highlight the partition.

   b. Select Fault Tolerance and choose Break Mirror.

   c. On the Partition menu, click Commit Changes Now.

   NOTE: If a message appears indicating that the mirror set cannot be locked and the system will need to be restarted in order to complete the breakage, choose YES.

   NOTE: Although the data on the primary disk is older than the data on the secondary disk you have the option at this point to boot to the primary disk using the older data and re-establishing the mirror. Simply reverse the drive assignments in the following steps. This also may allow you to over come the problem listed in the warning listed in step 4.

3. Once the mirror is successfully broken and you have two separate partitions, do a tape backup of the mirrored drive you are currently running from. This is the most current data you have and contains all the information saved since the primary operating system drive failed.

   NOTE: This is only a precautionary step because you are no longer in a fault tolerant configuration. You can skip this step if you are under time constraints, but Microsoft does not recommend you do so if critical data is involved.

   WARNING: There may be cases when disk mirroring with unlike drives or controller types could cause the mirrored partition to be larger than the original master partition. If the two partitions are not the exact same size in Disk Administrator, do not follow this procedure any further because you will not be able to re-mirror to a smaller partition size later. Instead, restore from the backup tape you made in this step to the primary system partition. Proceed to Step 9 after completing the restore.

4. Mark active the primary partition on the secondary drive. A reboot may be required. Complete this step before continuing.

   Delete the primary drive partition so you can re-mirror the current operating system back to the primary drive:

   a. Select the primary drive partition

   b. On the Partition menu, click Delete.

   c. On the Partition menu, click Commit Changes Now.

   NOTE: You may need to move the paging file to another drive and reboot before you are allowed to delete the partition.

   NOTE: If the entire primary C drive was mirrored and does not contain another primary partition to mark active, Disk Administrator will not allow you to delete the active partition. In this situation, moving the drive to a secondary non-bootable drive position (SCSI I.D greater than 0 or slave IDE drive) should allow you to delete the primary partition. If this is not possible, you can use Norton Utilities Disk Editor (Diskedit.exe) to remove the boot flag from the partition table manually.

5. Re-mirror the drives:

   a. Select the current operating system drive partition and while

         holding down the CTRL key.
   

   b. Select the free space created in Step 5.

   c. On the Fault Tolerance menu click Establish Mirror.

   d. On the Partition menu click Commit Changes Now.

   You can verify the mirror is established by either exiting and re-starting Disk administrator to check on the status of the mirror, or look for an Event:19 from Source:FTDISK in the system event log indicating that the mirror initialization or synchronization is complete.

6. Once this mirror is successfully established, you have a snapshot of the most current data onto the primary disk. Unfortunately you cannot reboot from the primary disk at this time because it is only a mirror. You cannot boot from a mirror while the master is active. You must re- break the mirror again by following Step 3 above.

7. Once the mirror is broken, mark the partition active if it is the primary boot partition.

8. Perform a normal shutdown and reboot from your primary operating system drive. Once Windows NT is running, delete the partition and then re-establish the mirror to regain your fault tolerant RAID-1 configuration.

Alternative Quick Recovery Method

An quick alternative way to recover is outlined below, but may result in possible data loss. Use at your own risk.

1. Boot from a Windows NT Fault tolerant boot disk to the mirrored drive (secondary drive).

2. Break the mirror in Disk Administrator.

3. Shutdown the computer and remove the secondary drive.

4. Boot from the primary drive.

5. Run Disk Administrator and make sure that the primary is not listed as a mirror.

6. Shutdown the computer and add the secondary drive. Restart the computer.

   NOTE: At this point, you should be able to access information on both drives safely and separately.