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OT: recover hard drive

M

Mika

Senior member
OK, I know this is way off topic, but I desperately need to recover a hard drive, and the most knowledgeable people I know are right here.

Anyway, my problem:

I have a 20GB HD with a 4 GB partition for the system and the rest for data. I wanted to reformat the system partition, and reinstall Win2k as well as all the apps.

Now of course I know you should always back up your files before doing anything like this, but obviously I didn't or I wouldn't have a problem.😱

I rebooted the machine with the Win2k CD, and load up the Win2k installer. It gets to the disk partitioning part, and I delete the old "c" partition, then create a new partition in it's place. The installer labels the new partition "e" for some reason. I don't wish to install Win2k on drive "e" and have no drive "c", so I figure a reboot will make the system "forget" there was a drive "c". The reboot caused the other partition to disappear.

Here is what I have tried in approximate order:
-put the drive in another system and hope Win2k can recognize the data partition. It didn't
-boot off the Win2k CD into the recovery mode and try to do auto recover (I didn't have a rescue disk either). Didn't work
-boot off the Win2k CD into the console recovery mode and run the fixmbr utility. No change.
-put the disk in another system and run Norton Disk Docter from Norton Utilities 2001. NDD recognized that there was a problem with the disk, but it was unable to recover the partitions.

Now I am out of ideas. Does anyone out there have any ideas as to what else I could try, or any other software I should run against the disk?

Mika
 
Uhhhh, I am not sure how to help now if Norton utilities could not, but I know where you went wrong. When you deleted the 'C' primary partition, you lost the extended partition as well.

There are some fancy disk tools that will get it back, but that may be another program.

BTW, is that lost partition NTFS or FAT32?

viz
 
Was this disk used in a machine that did not recognize drives > 8.4 GBytes? i.e. did you install the drive with a program such as MzxBlast or the equivalent?
 
Try looking here:
"Help me recover my data!" thread

I'm in a similar bind. I needed to transfer some data from a Win95 drive to a Win98 system. I lost the partitioning info for the logical drives in the extended partition. Lost and Found saw the partitions but you have to buy it to have it recover files. There are several other programs reffered to in that thread.

Good Luck!
 
If you were running Linux, may apply to Windows with a Linux fdisk: http://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/partition/partition-6.html

Some partition recovery tools, and instructions to recover the partition table: http://home.soneraplaza.nl/mw/prive/jvs/rebuildpt.htm

The README file for Partition Doctor, with screenshots: http://home.soneraplaza.nl/mw/prive/jvs/Readme.htm

gpart - Guess PC-type hard disk partitions, for Linux. "Gpart is a tool which tries to guess the primary partition table of a PC-type hard disk in case the primary partition table in sector 0 is damaged, incorrect or deleted. The guessed table can be written to a file or device. Supported (guessable) filesystem or partition types: DOS/Windows FAT (FAT 12/16/32), Linux ext2, Linux swap partitions versions 0 and 1 (Linux >= v2.2.X), OS/2 HPFS, Windows NTFS, *BSD disklabels, Solaris/x86 disklabels, Minix FS, Reiser FS, Linux LVM physical volume module (LVM by Heinz Mauelshagen): http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/user/76201/gpart/

"How to remove Master Boot Record viruses", may apply here. http://www.claws-and-paws.com/virus/faqs/mbrfaq.shtml

LinuxDoc Partition Rescue Mini-HOWTO: http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Partition-Rescue-mini-HOWTO.html

cfdisk Manual page (you may need this for some of the above if you're not familiar with it): http://hegel.ittc.ukans.edu/topics/linux/man-pages/man8/cfdisk.8.html

"BPR(tm) is a simple but powerful software utility program which automatically repairs the boot sector and partition table of DOS, Windows95, Windows98, and WindowsNT (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 & NTFS) formatted hard drives and removable media. Now you can repair the boot sector and partition table of your corrupt hard drive or removable media. Thus allowing you access to your data instead of having to send it in for data recovery services." Unfortunatley, "Download BPR
The unregistered version will allow you to scan your media and reconstruct the boot sectors and partition tables but will not write any repairs to the drive.", but you never know how true that statement is: http://www.atl-datarecovery.com/bp.htm

Ontrack Remote Data Recovery, may be able to recover it even if the above can't, worth a shot anyway: http://www.ontrack.com/rdr/

Yes, some of the above are commercial products. No, I don't endorse them or anything. Just throwing ideas your way.

-edit 1- corrected a url. May add more later as I stumble across them.
 
I hate to be the bearer of bad news.. but if you've already tried other methods of recovery, it's quite possible that those earlier attempts may have ruined any chance of future recovery! I'm really hoping that this isn't the case, but it's something to be prepared for.

"Lost & Found" has helped some people that I know, but it is something you'd have to buy; unfortunately, most people don't buy into a good backup solution and it's not completely their fault, as most sales people don't sell it either.

 
Mika,

just a thought... if this data is vital for you there exists companies that recover data professionally...

I don't know any in Canada or the US but I know at least two here in Europe, and both can get back data without having to rely on "crude measures" like software... What these guys do seems like magic to me, they use special read heads controlled by some serious software stuff and are actually able to recover data that has been written over several times... If it's REALLY important to you, and you're willing to PAY I'd consider going to such a firm... Other than that I think the others know more than me, and I hope you get your data back!

With love and respect your fellow TA member

Two-Face
 
your looking at about 2000 to 4000 american dollars to have the drive fixed by a hardware solution. Most of the time they only do this when the spindle on the drive is dead.

LD
 
The last suggestion in my list was for what appears to be a remote way of recovering "soft" errors with hard drives through a service. Since the HD is fully functional, just the partition table is hosed, there's not much they can do at their shop that they can't do over the Internet.
 
I wanted to thank everyone here for taking the time to give advice on my partition problem. Thanks largely to this link in Rendus's post, I was able to fully reconstruct the partition in question!! 😀 I recovered all my data, and learned quite a bit about partition tables in the process. Of course I lost an entire day of productivity, but I think the data is worth it.

Thanks everyone!

Mika
 
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