HELP: Partition Magic 8 Merging Error

[cmge]

i got a new HD and made it specifically for my OS and programs.. so far so good... using Partition Magic 8 worked fine..

then i wanted to merge my old "C" drive with my old "D" drive... same drive mind you just partition.... so when i used the merge option in Parition Magic 8 to merge both "C" and "D" during the process of it Partition Magic gave me an "Error 1520"!? so the whole merging process was cancelled...

OK..

then suddenly my windows detects my "D" drive as unallocated.. >_< ... WT?F!... and so i checked if Partition Magic if it detected it and nothing... its being detected as unallocated.. >_<

ive used Partition Magic b4 and never encountered any problems... now i have this prob and i think ive lost a crapload of data... >_< ... is there any way I can recover the data on this drive or is all lost and needs to be FDisked?

i tried using the undelete feature in Partition Magic 8 but its saying that there was no partition on "D" drive...

any help woul dbe greatly appreciated... thanks

 

[aceman817]

Sounds to me like the file system is messed up. I haven't used Partition Magic in a while, but I've heard of similar situations. Did you make a rescue disk when you installed Partition Magic? If I remember correctly, that disk will let you fix some of these kinds of errors. If not, your next step may be to try a data recovery product such as GetDataBack for NTFS or FAT. There are demos available at http://www.runtime.org/downloads.htm.

 

[DetroitSportsFan]

I've experienced just about every error that Partition Magic can throw a person's way. Its a great program, but has its moments when it can get rather buggy.

At any rate, I've used Ontrack Easy Recovery Professional to recover from partition magic errors. It will allow you to reclaim most of your lost files. Once you've got your data back, then you can format the drive and proceed as if it never happened.

P.S. Ontrack isn't cheap software! Others here have used GetDataBack. However, I'm not sure what all its capable of fixing. Can someone help answer this question?

 

[wpenhall]

I just experienced the same thing - and stumbled into a a solution... Hopefully this will work for you.

I went to merge two partitions (only two on the drive) using PM 8.0, and after 94% of progress, I got the dreaded 1520: External Attribute Header Mismatch error and operations were cancelled. PM showed the drive ok with the single partition, but when I tried to check for errors, I kept getting the 1520 message. I checked windows explorer, and it didn't even see the drive anymore. I checked Symantec's site, and they recommended running chkdsk /f. I started to panic because how could I do that if windows couldn't see the drive?

On a whim, I exited out of PM and ran Computer Management (Win 2k). I went to disk management, and it showed the drive as healthy (!) I then rightclicked the partition, selected properties / tools / error checking / automatically fix file system errors. It ran through three phases, then said check complete. Windows explorer, however, still didn't see the drive.

I opened PM again, and ran check errors again. This time it worked, and I didn't get the 1520 error. I then noticed that the drive was lacking a letter - I quickly assigned it the original drive letter and went back to windows. It worked! Windows saw it - and the files I brought over from the deleted partition were all there in a new folder!

I may have just been extremely lucky (at no time did the drive show up as unallocated), but hopefully this will work for someone else.