Is my data lost?

[darknoobie]

ok i made a stupid mistake yesterday..

i wanted to make a fresh install of windows but i wanted to keep all my other stuff.. i needed to resize my existing partition so i can make a bigger second partition to fit some stuff on there (partitionmagic wouldnt let me make a partition of more than 1.5gigs so i figured i had to resize my existing partition. ok well i was unaware that it would take so long .. and i figured after like 20 minutes that it froze. so i hit the reset button on my system and now everything seems to be messed up! friend says my partition table is messed up and that there is no hope to retrieve data? .. i am currently on a second computer in my house i desperately need help! am i hopeless and should just format or what.

 

[LED]

You can try reinstallung you OS over top or go into DOS and copy your stuffs...another way is to use another HD as your Master create the OS and have your existing HD as the slave so you can acess it and the files that are there

 

[darknoobie]

what i tried to do was.. i made a ms-dos boot disc on this computer and took it to my computer and booted up into dos.. and tried to access the C: .. and to no avail there was no C:.. so i dont know what is the problem.. my new idea now is to hook this HD to this computer and see what happens.

oh and when i said that my computer was messed up i meant i couldnt boot Windows or anything it would say there is something wrong.,

 

[LED]

my new idea now is to hook this HD to this computer and see what happens.

basically option 3 of what I stated however I wiould take the HD from that Puter (the 1 that won't boot) and hook it up as a slave on your working 1...good luck

 

[Markfw]

Go back to the setup on the original computer and boot from the floppy (make sure the floppy has Fdisk on it). Then run fdisk, and see if it thinks there is a valid partition on there. Sometimes a "fdisk/mbr" helps straighten out the boot, but I suspect that you corrupted you partition and are SOL. If that is the case, you just have to go into fdisk, create a partition (or boot XP and start an install).

 

[darknoobie]

ok then my last two questions are.

1. Let's say i hook it up as slave and it really is messed up would it show up in My Computer as a drive or it wont show at all, or will Windows boot at all.

2. I lost my manual do yo uhappen to know how to set up the pins on the back of the HD to be set as slave.

its a Maxtor 93652U8

 

[LED]

The jumper settings (my Maxtor jumpers are set vertically although many differ) should be on the HD and if the HD is not seen then read Markfw900 post...you may very well be SOL

 

[darknoobie]

I have a question for you Mark.

could you be more elaborate a bout "fdisk/mbr" and how it will straighten out the boot

ok so if the partition is corrupted.. are the files on it lost forever? or if like you said to boot XP to start an install would that fix it also?

im lost please be more detailed in what to do.. im often times very dense

 

[darknoobie]

what does SOL mean???

 

[Markfw]

First, if you are not good and experienced with fdisk, ignore the rest of this, load XP over and let it fix/delete any bad partitions it may find, otherwise, read on.......

"could you be more elaborate a bout "fdisk/mbr" and how it will straighten out the boot"

If there is a valid partition (you can see one in fdisk), but it won't boot, then type (after booting from floppy):
fdisk/mbr<CR>
sys C:<CR>

"ok so if the partition is corrupted.. are the files on it lost forever? or if like you said to boot XP to start an install would that fix it also? "

Yes, if no valid partition shows, data is gone unless you buy a software package that can recover data (exspensive) or send to a data recovery company (even more exspensive). The XP install will simply make it easier to create a new partition if you are not accomplished in fdisk.

edit: SOL = "sh#t outta luck" meaning NO data.

 

[GrumpyMan]

Originally posted by: darknoobie
what does SOL mean???

Sh_t out of luck.

 

[Slogun]

My guess is your data will be unrecoverable, but you may as well try a few things:

First try fdisk/ mbr (you do this after booting to a bootdisk, just type fdisk/ mbr and hit enter, you will get no confirmation message, then reboot without the boot disk).

Yes, there is a space between th (/) and the (m). That will reset your mast boot record (mbr) and maybe you can boot the machine.

Alternatively, you can try to access the drive as a slave on another machine, but I doubt it.

If you don't know the pin placement for slave (it should indicate in small lettrs on the case of the drive itself) you can pull any jumper that is on the drive and hook it up to the MIDDLE connector of an IDE cable (no pin is cable select by default).

Third option would be to reinstall WinXP over itself.

Again, I don't believe any of these options will work, but you have nothing to lose.
Maybe you can acces the data via dos, but I can't help you with that.

Good luck.

 

[Slogun]

This is why I don't mess with separate partitions on a hard drive. I keep my data on a separate D hard drive.

 

[darknoobie]

silly question but it's been a long time since ive done it..

how do i make a Xp bootdisc :-/ sigh lol

 

[Slogun]

Nevermind trying to make a WinXP bootdisk, just use a Win9x bootdisk.

If you don't have one or remember how, control panel/Add Remove Program/windows setup

 

[MisterMe]

Make ths a bit more clear. Thats "fdisk /mbr" not "fdisk/mbr" - a space between "fdisk" and "/mbr" is important. What this does is replaces the current partition table with the backup copy. Maybe your backup will be of the previous config, maybe it won't. You'll know right of way when you reboot if indeed the backup copy used was indeed the correct one...

 

[Vegito]

enable your pm

 

[Ipno]

If he was running XP a 98 bootdisk won't work if he made the drive NTFS it will appear as invisible.

What you can do is boot off the XP CD and hit F8 and go into the recovery console, see if you can see the drive from there.

 

[Vegito]

enable your pm

 

[LED]

Good point Ipno ...same thing if he tried to hook up 1 slave drive to Windows 98

 

[darknoobie]

pm is enabled

 

[Slogun]

Originally posted by: Ipno
If he was running XP a 98 bootdisk won't work if he made the drive NTFS it will appear as invisible.

I just booted up my WinXP Pro NTFS comp with my old Win98 bootdisk.

I was not talking about accessing the drive data this way, was talking about doing FDISK/ MBR

I've reset my MBR on my NTFS drive using this method .