My partitions are screwed - can't boot - Arrggh!

[Monkey34]

Well, like a dope, I havn't backed up in a while. I was preparing to do one, and (dumb idea) wanted to "clean house" before hand.............instead of just DOING IT.
I had a small partition at the end of my disk I have wanted to get rid of a loong time ago, so I thought I'd lose it now, so if I need to install from backup, I wont still have it around.

I happened to be using Partition Magic 2002 (has always worked before). Normally I would do this in 2 steps........delete the partition, and recover the unallocated space second - but for some reason I chose to "merge partitions". It started, and gave a quick error about copying a file at the end. After re-boot, I got a bsod stop error. After next boot It acts like the disk isnt there. I am assuming the patition table or the MBR is messed up. I can also assume the files are all still there, so I'm not freaking yet.

Should I start with the MBR - maybe try fdisk /mbr to rewrite it? I'm not sure what it really does though - is it using an internal backup of the MBR?

I'm not concerned with the second small partition.....it didn't have anything on it of importance, just some school files that I could care less about - but the C drive is what matters.

What would you reccomend as a first step?

 

[digital_exhaust]

Try booting from your install cd and see if it detects any "recoverable" operating systems, and if so choose to save it. I don't know if that will work or not, but it's worth a try.

 

[Monkey34]

Do you mean my Partition magic or XP? I tried the Partition magic floppy, but I think it's corrupted - shouda burned a cd instead.

 

[digital_exhaust]

Sorry... I meant your XP install cd.. should have made that a little more clear.

And rather than screwing around with PM, have a look at PartedMagic, it's free and far superior to PartitionMagic... really, it is.

Edit!!

I almost forgot... you can also try using the SuperGrub Disk.. another free utility that might do the trick as well. It's pretty new to me and I haven't had a lot of time to play around with it yet, but it claims to repair Windows bootloaders as well. Read through the link above and see what you think.

 

[leSLIe]

i stop using Partition Magic some time ago, cuz it´s just too old and it gives me error messages. Now i use Acronis Disk Director Suite v10, pretty good stuff

 

[Monkey34]

Well I tried out Parted Magic. Its nice, I think I'll stick with it for a while. I havn't checked out Supergrub yet, although I burned a disk of it.

I'm not going to do much tonight......I'm completely fed-up today between the computer situation, having to repair my washing machine, and having to take all the christmas stuff down and put it back in the attic. Normally, I'd frag a few people to relax, but all I have right now is the family-room computer - there's nothing like using your own. Oh well.

Oh. Parted Magic showed the hdd as "Unallocated" - of the right size. I'm thinking Partition Magic merged the partitions, and forgot to finish the last step or something. I dont want to create a partition yet.......will it affect the files/os/etc that I'm sure is still there?

 

[digital_exhaust]

I dont want to create a partition yet.......will it affect the files/os/etc that I'm sure is still there?

If you write anything over that "Uballocated" space, it will be written over the data that is there now, so leave as is. I've read up a bit more, and assuming that SuperGrub works the way they claim it does, it should boot your Windows install just fine.

 

[Monkey34]

Well Supergrub sees the NTFS Windows OS, but wont boot it.
My windows disk sees the partition - listed as "C:".....and "unknown" - and then the smaller partition that used to be there as "unallocated space". The sizes are listed as they originally were.
I'm not sure what the best course of action is here.
I wouldn't care about a "re-installation" of XP over itself if thats what its going to do.......... but if its going to be a fresh install, I might want to try recovering the data first - I dont want to frag all my stuff.

 

[Monkey34]

Update: also used recovery console to see what my options were with "fixboot", and "fixmbr" commands.
Fixboot asks "are you sure you want to write a new bootsector to the partition C:?
Ans: Umm...no, I'm not sure yet.
Fixmbr states: "this computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid MBR". If I proceed, I am warned "this may damage your partition tables if you proceed potentially making your data inaccessible".

I need to do some more research on this.

 

[Monkey34]

Hmm. I tried a bunch of free programs, and most of them will not work on a disk that isn't "all there". It has to be fully recognized by windows.
I tried out Photorec, and It started to pull photos off the disk. Testdisk is supposed to rebuild the boot, and mbr, but I think I wont touch them until I recover my data first. Get Data Back will do file copies or a complete image of the disk (for $80). Guess I'm into this for about $200 - the program and a new drive (as I dont have one big enough to put all the files/image) onto.

 

[fbiguy]

Any status update Monkey34?

I may or may not be in your situation, kinda wanna know how your story ends (assuming its ended by now)

 

[Monkey34]

Well, I've been using "Zero Assumtion Recovery".It's like GetDataBack...but different. It allows you to recover 4 folders of data a scan for free (although it reported that it can recover 67gigs of data when Get Data Back reported it could recover all 71 gigs - could be that some would be recovered corrupted though?). It takes almost 1 hour to scan my 160gig hdd - and then save 4 folders - and it treats EVERY folder as a seperate one (no saving the My Documents and every folder in it for example). I was trying to be cheap, but dang.........you never realize how many folders there are. ZAR is $50, GDB is $80 - but has a nicer interface. I had started another thread to check them out here: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1260876

I still plan on trying to repair the install, but its gonna be a while untill I sort out the folders I want to backup. I would just image the drive and try the fix, but I dont have another drive big enough. I was going to buy an external, but some recent bills stopped me.........so I'm stuck weeding through my files, untill I have what I want, and then try a fix. If it doesn't work - format.