XP NTFS partition blew up and shows as unknown. How to recover the partition?

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compudocs

[H]ard|Gawd
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I have a hard drive with XP Home on it that I need to get data off of after the partition blew up and now shows up as "Unknown" in XP setup and "RAW" in disk manager. The utility partition and recovery partition form the hard drive are still intact but not the OS partition.

I've already run chkdsk /r , fixboot and fixmbr to no avail. The hard drive ran without errors in HDAT2 and the IBM HD utility, no bad sectors or anything. When I ran fixboot it did tell me there was an error and it took 3 tries to write the new boot sector then I tried another chkdsk /r and still nada.

Anyone have a clue how to fix the file system so I can get this data off the hard drive?
 
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The best way I know how recreate a partition is through Linux. If you feel confident in yourself, download Knoppix and burn it to a CD or DVD or whichever it requires now. Boot to the CD, and it'll run a version of Linux in the RAM, without writing anything to your hard drive.

Now gets the tricky part. First you have to translate in your mind from Windows partition naming system to Linux. When plugged into your computer, your devices go into the /dev/ folder. You'll need to figure out which one is your C drive, D drive, E drive, and so on (Hard drives only). If all of them are serial ATA, then C drive will be /dev/sda, D = /dev/sdb, E = /dev/sdc.... and so on. Each partition is then numbered starting at 1. From now on I'll be assuming that the hard drive would be the "D" drive if it worked in Windows.

Run the Terminal application.
fdisk /dev/sdb
print the menu (I believe "p" is the proper letter), it'll tell you which letter to enter.
list the partition table
If the partition exists that you want, write down how big it is (I believe the number is in sectors). It should be sdb1. If not, write down where the 2nd partition (utility & recovery partition) starts. Or, if the U&R partition is first, then write down where U&R part stops. U&R will be the smaller partition.
Delete the data partition. This is okay right now, because you're not actually removing it.
Make a new partition. p for primary, give it the proper number, list the partition types and chose the NTFS number.
Now, to define the size you will do one of two things:
If the data partition is first, press enter so the partition starts at the beginning of the drive, then enter the number you wrote down but subtract 1. This way the partition doesn't stop where the other one is supposed to start. If the data partition is second, enter the number you wrote down but add 1, then press enter to tell the partition to take up the rest of the drive.
List the partition table again to make sure everything's right.
If what you see is correct, write the partition table to the drive. You have now redefined your partitions.
Exit the program, exit Linux, and see if Windows finds it.

If you have any other questions let me know :3
 
The first step it to get a utility from the manufacturer if they provide one that will let you perform a non-destructive test to determine if there is disk surface damage causing the issue. If there is disk surface damage, taking any further steps may be moot.

People almost always learn the importance of making backups the hard way...
 
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