This just isn't my night...any way to undo fdisk?

[jagec]

Well, I was using my new laptop hard drive to standard IDE converter to try and fix an old laptop I have lying around. I had the laptop hard drive in my primary computer, and I was using a Windows 98 bootdisk to partition/reformat the thing. Well, I figured "Hey, this is WINDOWS 98, it's not going to be able to access my SATA drives without extra drivers". So I left them plugged in. Sure enough, when it booted, it gave me the standard "C drive not detected...have you fdisked it? Do you have a virus Are you sure you HAVE a drive?" menu. So I figured the (damaged) laptop drive was the only thing being detected. Ha, ha. I delete the only partition I detect, shutdown, and take out the laptop hard drive.
...well, now I'm getting "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER". Oh...no.....it MUST have detected my SATA drives, even though I thought it wasn't possible!

Anyway, I know that all that nice expensive file recovery software will help me out. However, I was wondering if there was any simpler way, since I didn't format or make ANY changes after fdisking. I didn't even define a new partition. Would something like FIXMBR from the Windows Recovery Console help me? Or maybe there's some freeware out there....?

thanks.

 

[jagec]

bump!

 

[Tiamat]

umm, i hate to say this, but in my limited knowledge, once you hit the OK for fdisk, and it does its thing, your drive is wiped. For last ditch effort, try your SATA drive in another computer.

 

[Matthias99]

I would try this question in Operating Systems (or try a search; you're not the first person to screw this up, somehow) -- but if all you did was unpartition the drives (and didn't do a full format), you should be able to get your data back. If you did a "real" format, you're probably SOL.

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
I would try this question in Operating Systems (or try a search; you're not the first person to screw this up, somehow) -- but if all you did was unpartition the drives (and didn't do a full format), you should be able to get your data back. If you did a "real" format, you're probably SOL.

No, I just unpartitioned it. I know the data is recoverable, and I know that there is software that will do it for me, but I was wondering if there was a way to do it for free. Seeing as my data is less gone than most...I didn't even create a new partition.

 

[montag451]

if you haven't formatted [and sometimes even if you have] the data is still there - you are right.

for free, i don't know of any progs that will recover data.
for fee, there is
spinrite6 [excellent], getdataback [excellent],
others i haven 't tried, but have heard about:
restore2000,

BUT FOR YOU
active partition recovery 3

 

[AluminumStudios]

My post might be pointless since I don't know any free software, however it should be 100% recoverable with the right software provided you don't do anything more to the drive.

You'll want to put it in as a 2nd hard drive on a machine and run the software on it (unless you're booting from a floppy and running a utility, IIRC Spintrite is DOS based .. but I don't know anything about DOS and SATA ...

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: AluminumStudios
My post might be pointless since I don't know any free software, however it should be 100% recoverable with the right software provided you don't do anything more to the drive.

You'll want to put it in as a 2nd hard drive on a machine and run the software on it (unless you're booting from a floppy and running a utility, IIRC Spintrite is DOS based .. but I don't know anything about DOS and SATA ...

hmm, you have a good point. I think I'll try that.

I feel like such a moron...usually I ALWAYS unplug the power connector from drives I don't want to mess up. It's a nice margin of safety when you've got 3-4 drives in one machine. This time I didn't.

 

[montag451]

oh