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EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
edited June 2006 in Hardware
Ok, while trying to fix this wrecked Windows install I deleted all partitions on the drive (yes, I am sane) as I wished to recreate them in a different logical order (boot, windows, data, gentoo) which was also their physical order (as currently their logical order was (windows, data, gentoo, boot) which doesn't work as boot needs to be under the 1024 cylinder boundary. Anyway, I recreated the partitions on the same sectors that they were on originally and the 2 linux drives were fine, but the 2 Windows partitions don't seem to be anything anymore. Linux wont mount them saying they are corrupted and need to be chkdsk'd (which I can't supprisingly) and recovery programs... well they don't seem to do anything (like the ones on the UBCD).

Any ideas? Anyone done anything like this before either? I'm not so much concerned about the Windows partition, only the DATA one (they are both NTFS). I'd have backed them up if I had an infinate amount of media to back them up onto.

They are currently unpartitioned space as I know that the data and everything else is technically there and all still intact, just not actually in a partition anymore.

Comments

  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited June 2006
    Don't all crowd at once.

    Well I think I can salvage the files from the drive (but not the whole partitions as they were) but there are no free programs to do it. I've noticed a few (Handy Recovery, Easy Recovery Pro) all let you scan and then taunt you with the results, but none of them will let you recovery anything without paying. Yay.
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited June 2006
    Test Disk

    The best data recovery software ive ever used.
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited June 2006
    Tried that, didn't do anything. Sure as hell coudln't rescue any files. It looked like it was supposed to recover partitions but didn't and the only thing it would do was repair the bootsector on the NTFS partitions, but that didn't help. After letting it scan for like 2 hours or so it finally finished and didn't find any recoverable partitions.

    I've been up like 36 hours or so now doing nothing but pratting about with every single ****ty program that claims to do things but actually doesn't when the **** hits the fan. My 'rag' has officially been lost and I am officially very pissed off.
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited June 2006
    I think I'm just going to throw them in the bin now along with the rest of my PC. Sick of having to deal with them and no-one ever knowing how to fix anything.
  • mcwcmcwc Vancouver, BC Member
    edited June 2006
    I've used Stellar Phoenix for FAT and NTFS to recover data on my friend's external HDD and it worked well. I've also tried PC Inspector File Recovery but I can't remember if it worked for me or not as I have the installer saved on my hdd.

    There is also Steve Gibson's SpinRite, which has a really good reputation on data recovery but I have never used it.

    I've tried Test Disk myself but it didn't work for me.
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited June 2006
    No partition recovery programs worked nor did any partition recreating programs (or even things like Easy Recovery Pro as they were too vague and had a bad way of searching). Anyway, I managed to salvage the files I wanted although not the partitions as a whole.

    Thanks for the effort MCWC.
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