What do you do when partition magic messes up?

[Smartazz]

Partition magic messed up while it was being used. Now the computer gets to the windows xp loading screen then just crashes. Is there a way to fix the hard drive? Thanks.

 

[g paw]

This has happened to me a couple of times over the years, usually because I did something stuped. I found 2 ways to take care of it. One to get the hdd mfg software for setting up the drive and boot it from the Floppy and format the drive. Of course you'll lose everything. The last time this happened I put in a new hdd and installed the OS. Then put the screwed one in as a 2hd hard drive, be sure to set up the BIOS to start from the Drive with the OS. I was able to copy all my files from old drive and then formatted the old one and am using it for storage.

 

[Smartazz]

Originally posted by: g paw
This has happened to me a couple of times over the years, usually because I did something stuped. I found 2 ways to take care of it. One to get the hdd mfg software for setting up the drive and boot it from the Floppy and format the drive. Of course you'll lose everything. The last time this happened I put in a new hdd and installed the OS. Then put the screwed one in as a 2hd hard drive, be sure to set up the BIOS to start from the Drive with the OS. I was able to copy all my files from old drive and then formatted the old one and am using it for storage.

You're second option was exactly what I was thinking, I need an excuse to go ahead and buy a Scythe Mine now anyway. Thanks a lot for the suggestion. I have important stuff on that corrupted hard drive. So I'll be able to format the bad harddrive from within windows right? Thanks.

 

[g paw]

Just use Disk Manager to to format it. Be sure to disconnect the old hdd before you install the new one, otherwise you might end up with the OS on a drive other than C. Like I said be sure to set up the drive with the OS as the 1st boot drive in the BIOS and it should work. I'm not positive but I think I was able to fix the drive with the OS that was corrpted with either chkdsk /f or using Partition Magic and then boot from the drive. Then I could export my bookmards and e mail addresses to the new drive. Wish I could remember exactly what I did but basically I just played around with the old drive after I transferred all the files

 

[RebateMonger]

Put Windows on a "new" hard drive. Buy an external USB housing for the "old" hard drive. Copy your important data files from the "old" drive to the "new" drive.

Reformat the "old" drive in the USB housing and use it for making ongoing system backups from now on, so you won't have to worry about losing data in the future.

 

[benplaut]

You can use a tool like gpart (not gparted!) to try and recover your partition table. I think it's available on UBCD

 

[Zepper]

And there is software called R-Studio from http://www.r-tt.com that can recover data from pretty munged up drives as long as they aren't mechanically or electronically damaged (IOW, just suffer from system file and/or directory corruption).

.bh.

 

[JBT]

Don't use Partiton magic...