Undelete partition by restoring partition table?
Hi everyone. To make a loooong story short, I had a RAID 1 array on an nForce 410 chipset (see setup below) and it degraded, so I decided to break the array for good (i've been meaning to get around to it) so I could keep one disk intact (disk 1) to use as-is and use the other disk (disk 2) for additional storage.
I deleted the array from the F10 screen, disabled RAID in BIOS, and entered WinXP. I was deleting the contents of disk 2, but was having issues with WinXP reading or writing to it properly (Generic Host Win32 kept crashing, I assume because it was because the RAID drivers were still installed? I went to un-install them/it but it had disappeared--i assumed because i disabled the hardware RAID and thus it was no longer detected). Because the crash was making winxp lock up, I decided to go into the recovery console and simply delete the partitions of disk 2 and reformat it.
Unfortunately, I got the disks mixed up. For some reason the recovery console was unable to read either drive (it had found both but called them drives c: and d: respectively, even though each drive had 4 partitions on it. a simple DIR command gave me an error with directory enumeration. i ignored it because windows could read the drives) so i was unable to verify which drive was which--i simply assumed the first plug was device 0. It wasn't. I effectively overwrote the partition table for the disk i wanted to keep (disk 1) by deleting the partition DISKPART did detect (it detected the logical partition in which my extended partitions were in) and then just creating one 100gb in size, leaving the other space "raw" for now. That's bad, considering:
1) I didn't back up my data (yeah, i know).
2) While I have recovery software on this compy I can't run it because disk 2 already had part of its windows folder deleted. Upon trying to boot from it, it won't make it past the welcome screen (it doesn't list users, it just sits there).
3) This machine only has 2 SATA II plugs (damn micro ATX) and no PATA plugs, making it impossible for me to throw another drive in there and recover data from it.
So basically this is what I'm left with:
Since both the drives originally had an identical partition table (i'm assuming so, at least, since they were part of the same mirror array), can't I just copy the partition table from the bad disk (disk 2) to the one i want to save (disk 1), meaning all I would have to do is rebuild the MBR (or perhaps copy the MBR from the other disk as well) in order to make it bootable and accessible again?
Or am I incorrect in assuming that the good partition table from disk 2 would work for disk 1? Let me reiterate the above by saying that the only thing different between these two disks (before the repartition mistake) was that I deleted some files from disk 2 and booted up disk 1 independently once (nothing was changed). This minor difference would not effect the partition table, nor the MBR, correct? So therefore I could get away with copying the partition table and MBR from disk 2 to disk 1, and this would make this drive bootable again?
Would it be better for me to just un-partition the drive? If so, any ideas on some free software that would allow me to do this? Or would it be better for me to reformat disk 2 and then run recovery software from it? I'm hesitant to reformat anything since, as things currently stand, I should be able to recover all my data. You may wish to note that partition manager software such as Ranish Partition Manager and Partition Saving 3.01 can read from both disks without a problem--my data is still there!
Any suggestions or comments at all would be appreciated!!
Thanks,
Josh
P.S. Here's my setup:
WinXP Pro 32-bit, completely updated as of 8/27/06
AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+
Biostar T-Force 6100-939 mobo (nForce 410 chipset)
ATI Radeon X1800 PCI-E 256mb
2x1gb GSkill DDR 400 Dual Channel Mode
2x320gb Maxtor SATA II in RAID 1
LG 8x DVD+-RW IDE
LG 4x DVD+-RW IDE
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz 5.1 (w00t, lol)
CoolMAX 600W PSU
I deleted the array from the F10 screen, disabled RAID in BIOS, and entered WinXP. I was deleting the contents of disk 2, but was having issues with WinXP reading or writing to it properly (Generic Host Win32 kept crashing, I assume because it was because the RAID drivers were still installed? I went to un-install them/it but it had disappeared--i assumed because i disabled the hardware RAID and thus it was no longer detected). Because the crash was making winxp lock up, I decided to go into the recovery console and simply delete the partitions of disk 2 and reformat it.
Unfortunately, I got the disks mixed up. For some reason the recovery console was unable to read either drive (it had found both but called them drives c: and d: respectively, even though each drive had 4 partitions on it. a simple DIR command gave me an error with directory enumeration. i ignored it because windows could read the drives) so i was unable to verify which drive was which--i simply assumed the first plug was device 0. It wasn't. I effectively overwrote the partition table for the disk i wanted to keep (disk 1) by deleting the partition DISKPART did detect (it detected the logical partition in which my extended partitions were in) and then just creating one 100gb in size, leaving the other space "raw" for now. That's bad, considering:
1) I didn't back up my data (yeah, i know).
2) While I have recovery software on this compy I can't run it because disk 2 already had part of its windows folder deleted. Upon trying to boot from it, it won't make it past the welcome screen (it doesn't list users, it just sits there).
3) This machine only has 2 SATA II plugs (damn micro ATX) and no PATA plugs, making it impossible for me to throw another drive in there and recover data from it.
So basically this is what I'm left with:
Since both the drives originally had an identical partition table (i'm assuming so, at least, since they were part of the same mirror array), can't I just copy the partition table from the bad disk (disk 2) to the one i want to save (disk 1), meaning all I would have to do is rebuild the MBR (or perhaps copy the MBR from the other disk as well) in order to make it bootable and accessible again?
Or am I incorrect in assuming that the good partition table from disk 2 would work for disk 1? Let me reiterate the above by saying that the only thing different between these two disks (before the repartition mistake) was that I deleted some files from disk 2 and booted up disk 1 independently once (nothing was changed). This minor difference would not effect the partition table, nor the MBR, correct? So therefore I could get away with copying the partition table and MBR from disk 2 to disk 1, and this would make this drive bootable again?
Would it be better for me to just un-partition the drive? If so, any ideas on some free software that would allow me to do this? Or would it be better for me to reformat disk 2 and then run recovery software from it? I'm hesitant to reformat anything since, as things currently stand, I should be able to recover all my data. You may wish to note that partition manager software such as Ranish Partition Manager and Partition Saving 3.01 can read from both disks without a problem--my data is still there!
Any suggestions or comments at all would be appreciated!!
Thanks,
Josh
P.S. Here's my setup:
WinXP Pro 32-bit, completely updated as of 8/27/06
AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+
Biostar T-Force 6100-939 mobo (nForce 410 chipset)
ATI Radeon X1800 PCI-E 256mb
2x1gb GSkill DDR 400 Dual Channel Mode
2x320gb Maxtor SATA II in RAID 1
LG 8x DVD+-RW IDE
LG 4x DVD+-RW IDE
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz 5.1 (w00t, lol)
CoolMAX 600W PSU
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