**** MBR DELETED!!! HELP!!!!! ****

[CoasterGuy]

OK... Here's the deal...

My Master Boot Record was destroyed by Partition Magic 6.0, so all of my data is still on my drive, but all the partition info is lost. I ran a shareware program called "Final Data" and it showed me that all my data is still there but there was no way to copy it to another drive.

Does anyone know how to correct this problem? I CANNOT loose the data on this drive!!

Is there any way to recover a MBR or to extract the data from the drive to another?

 

[shathal]

Well ...

... if you backed up your MBR, then yes.

If you didn't - it's a case of "crap"!.

You can run fdisk /mbr but that is going to write a new MBR, which will result in killing off all your data as well. Hrm - you don't happen to have an "UNDO"-file for whatever PQMAGIC did per chance? That might be your best bet, I would say.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< Well ...

... if you backed up your MBR, then yes.

If you didn't - it's a case of &quot;crap&quot;!.

You can run fdisk /mbr but that is going to write a new MBR, which will result in killing off all your data as well. Hrm - you don't happen to have an &quot;UNDO&quot;-file for whatever PQMAGIC did per chance? That might be your best bet, I would say. >>



Every good computer user backs up the necessary stuff
But if s/he runs fdisk /mbr he will NOT lose his data. Its all good

 

[CoasterGuy]

There were 5 partitions on that drive. All FAT32. When I load Partition Magic in DOS, It says that there are no partitions or data on the drive. Like it is empty. When I put the drive in another system as a slave, Win ME doesn't recognize it since there is no MBR. But the BIOS sees the drive. However, like I said before, I was able to see that the data was intact using &quot;Final Data&quot; but I couldn't copy it to another place.

Would something like Norton's Disk Doctor be of any help recovering anything?

I am FREAKING OUT HERE!!!

 

[shathal]

fdisk /mbr will not loose data

... depends. I've had mixed results. Although the trend has been rather to be able to access data, I've had (maybe just bad luck) about a 60-40 ratio in success/failure. May have been just bad luck - but such faults I find it healthier to be more paranoid.

In general - prevention/backups is the really cunning thing to do .

Norton Disk Doctor is not going to be able to do much (it can't just rebuild an MBR). I take it then that you've not backed up either the MBR or the data. Hrm ... fdisk /mbr might really be then your best hope...

 

[CoasterGuy]

I used fdisk /mbr and I got the 1st partition back but Partition Magic is still saying the rest of the drive is empty. That &quot;Final Data&quot; program is still saying the data is there though.

 

[bevancoleman]

Nasty,

Try 'fdisk /mbr'. Rebuilds the master boot record, also usefull to get rid of some virus

 

[shathal]

Hrmm ... FAT's might be a little shafted ... of the Logical Partition that is (that being every drive beyond C:\ for you).

Hmmm ... *maybe* now NDD could do something for you, thought I do somewhat doubt it. Recreating the partition information will be tricky at best....

 

[HotWire]

Try the tech support group at Partition magic's 800#, it was probably their program that got you where you are now and if anyone's going to back you out of it it will be them. GOOD LUCK..........because at this point one mistake could cost you every piece of data you have on that drive

 

[Rendus]

A while back, I posted a message in a thread that would probably help you a bit here:

http://forums.anandtech.com/arcmessageview.cfm?catid=39&amp;threadid=289491&amp;highlight_key=y

May want to give some of those links a try.

 

[Slikkster]

Have you tried &quot;fdisk /cmbr&quot;? The &quot;cmbr&quot; switch is an undocumented switch that works the same as fdisk /mbr, but it lets you specify which disk you want to recreate the master boot record. Now, I don't know if that actually means physical disk vs. partition on one disk, but it might be worth a go. Look at the links on this switch and see for yourself:

Fdisk /cmbr Google Search

I believe the syntax is &quot;fdisk /cmbr <disk #>, so assuming your partition you want to recreate the master boot record is &quot;2&quot;, it would be &quot;fdisk /cmbr 2&quot;

Get the partition number you need by simply running Fdisk, then choose the &quot;Display partition info&quot; option. Then exit out, and run Fdisk /cmbr with the number of the partition you want to recreate.

 

[shathal]

Re: fdisk /cmbr

It would be physical disk.

There's only one MBR per physical disk (if I am not mistaken ...?) - as such it wouldn't make much sense to be anything else. Everything else is FAT/partition tables really ... AFAIK, this is just for the cases when one has multiple physical HDD's in a system.

 

[Slikkster]

yeah, good point on the mbr. I guess what's really needed is a utility to fix the &quot;Partition Boot Record&quot;, or &quot;PBR&quot;. There is one called Drive Clinic, but it ain't cheap. Will have to investigate to see if there's any other freebies out there that will do the same.

 

[shathal]

I'd like to know how it's actually supposed to &quot;fix&quot; a PBR. I'd be very impressed if it did it without cheating (making backups somewhere). Can't say - never had the thing. Though I am intrigued now .

 

[stockjock]

couldn't you use something like Lost and Found to get your data. I have used it before on a disk that I screwed up with partitioning software. I was able to recover the data that I wanted...but I was not able to recreate the MBR with it..only retrieve the data.

Just my .02

 

[stockjock]

I'm not sure if this is related or not....
I was building a computer for my father and what I did was put in a new 20gb HD and I partitioned it into to drives, a small 2 gb partition for the OS (Win ME) and 18gb for data and programs. I also wanted to take out his older and smaller drive from his old computer and put it into the new computer so he could have access to his old data, the old drive had Win 98 on it and that drive only had one partition on it. When I put it into the new system and set it to slave..the bios recognized it but WinME would not recognize it in the My Computer area....but it does see it in the device manager but there is no drive letter assigned to it. So I figure why not take out the old drive and put it in another computer as the master drive and the same thing happens...gets detected by bios..but of course it will not boot to WinME...
So I went into Fdisk to check it and it is telling me that the drive is a NON MSDOS drive...
I also copied over the entire drive to one of the the partitions on the larger drive and all that did was make the larger drives partition fail as well....
Can anyone tell me what happend?
And what to do to recover the data from the smaller drive...I know its still there because I saw it there when I did the backup to the larger drive with Maxblast utility....

any help would be appreciated..

 

[edblor]

If I am not mistaken,

There is always a copy of the MBR in the second boot sector! You need to find a utility to rewrite the MBR from the second boot sector!

G/L in your search! At least you still have data there. When my KA+ died, it took everything with it! No warning, no nothing

Edblorb

 

[CoasterGuy]

Ok guys. I have found a solution that worked perfectly.

I bought a copy of &quot;Final Data Standard ver 1.0&quot; I was originally using a demo version that wouldn't let you save anything that it found. This full version does.

It found EVERYTHING that was on my drive that was originally there as well as a whole bunch of stuff that I had deleted before this problem.

I HIGHLY RECOMEND this program. It was super fast and VERY easy to use. If you ever have a loss of data (Not a total meltdown), then this is your salvation.


And thanks for everyone's help and suggestions. You guys really do step up to the plate when someone's in need.

THANKS A LOT!!!