Some clever guy with HD partitions please help

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Gothan

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Hi

Anyone out there know of an excellent program, that will help me recover partitions on an ntfs hard drive.

Last night I got a nice little mbr error when i booted up, fixed it with mbrtool, but still had problems, so ran the windows xp cd and ran the remedy section, after that little stint, my 3 partitions on my main HD is now one big partition, And i knwo I did not format it, or repartitioned it. This means all my data is now in one ball of partition.

Is there a tool that can recover the partition, preferably free ware, preferably small enough to fit on a usb memory stick, so that I can write it on cd and try to get the data

Any help will be appreciated
 
From my point of view..... count your blessings. In normal cases when you get issues such as yours you loose all your data .... You are really lucky to still have them wheather in one parition or not. Back you data up and get a program like partition magic
 
freeek said:
From my point of view..... count your blessings. In normal cases when you get issues such as yours you loose all your data .... You are really lucky to still have them wheather in one parition or not. Back you data up and get a program like partition magic
Click to expand...

I think hes saying the drive is now one big partition and there is no data on it... he wants to bring back the partitions and the data. You would been to use a program like easy recovery pro and recover the data on the one big partition but your chances of getting the info back are slim as you have list the filing system on that drive.

Best of luck to you though.
 
I don't know of any freeware tools ... but getdataback was very usefull for me .... I think you should be able to use it in trial mode to get your data back ... and it is real small.
Unfortunately though, no matter what program you use, they will not allow you to restore to the same drive ... so you need another drive to restore to.
I had similar problems with the winxp install CD a while back and this little program saved my life (and my data).... good luck :)
 
Yip Person you are correct. I am going to by myself a new hard drive this afternoon (if there is a slim chance of recovering the data, I dont want to format the machine and reinstall), so I'll install on the new hard drive and then test on this one
 
Gothan, you've left a bunch of salient info out: like whether your (now ex) HDD was formatted for FAT32 or NTFS ..and that you have (at least access to) another PC to stick that drive into - but we're going to presume that you do! :D First off, you can pretty much get ANY recovery prog and run it against your drive for a 'look-see' ..they basically all tease you with a case of 'see what I can find for you? ..but I won't actually GET it for you until you pony up the $$, sucka!' So it costs you no real money to look, and see if any particular app can get at your Stuff(tm)

That said, I've repeatedly had spectacular success at the start of the data recovery game with the GetDataBack apps from Runtime Software(runtime.org). My last one was on a drive, tho' admittedly only a single partition, on a drive that 'doze utterly refused to recognise as valid and was only prepared to format. One thing: drive recovery is a 'watch grass grow' timeline process.. it's best to hook a system up, get it going then walk away from it as it works its way through the drive.
 
lucifir said:
I don't know of any freeware tools ... but getdataback was very usefull for me .... I think you should be able to use it in trial mode to get your data back ... and it is real small.
Unfortunately though, no matter what program you use, they will not allow you to restore to the same drive ... so you need another drive to restore to.
I had similar problems with the winxp install CD a while back and this little program saved my life (and my data).... good luck :)
Click to expand...


Thanks I'll defintely try it
 
Well thanks for everyone's help, I'll defintely try it. And keep you posted. Yes the hard drive was ntfs (well 2 of the 3 partitions, I am only interested ins ome data of the two). My biggest concern is getting my pst file back, and then of course my mp3 partition, but the pst file is the most crucial
 
Also, do not use the drive too much (like try and boot from it, etc). The more you use it before you peak inside with a data recovery tool, the less chance you have of recovery.
 
kingmonty said:
Also, do not use the drive too much (like try and boot from it, etc). The more you use it before you peak inside with a data recovery tool, the less chance you have of recovery.
Click to expand...

Nope, not going to use it at all until I am sure that I cannot get any data from it, or that I cannot get any more data then it has already retrieved, and then it'll just be another hard drive, and the new one will be the boot drive
 
Also try Ontrack Easy Recovery Professional, never had to use it, but they say it works awesomely, I've got the full version :)
 
dude next time just repair windows before doing anything or do a fresh install without formatting

if that doesnt work then just format the c: or whatever you use for windows
also make a smallish partition for windows like 10 gigs and only use that for windows dont store your info there

once you loose your partition you loose your data
 
killadoob said:
dude next time just repair windows before doing anything or do a fresh install without formatting

if that doesnt work then just format the c: or whatever you use for windows
also make a smallish partition for windows like 10 gigs and only use that for windows dont store your info there

once you loose your partition you loose your data
Click to expand...

You see the problem was this, I had one hard drive, with 3 partitions on it, it seems the boot sector or something got corrupt, and in the end, it through all 3 partitions in one big partition as a new volume, meaning all the info on the different partitions are lost, still think the boot sector is corrupt, buts its one hell of a thing to get it fixed, so now I am going to get a new hd, luckily not that expensive, install the os on that, and then start the painstaking task of trying to recover some data from the other hd
 
yea but playing with the mbr tool can only go badly hehehe

did you try and repair the windows installation?
 
Windows now doesnt even see the windows partition, absolutely nothing, one big empty ntfs partition. Well you usually need to fix the mbr when you get an error message : MBR Error1 when the pc boots up.

But yes it grills my motor, so that is why I am leaving that drive as is, and am getting the new one and then just try to get the info back, I have a backup up to the 6th of jan. But yes I hate myself and want to strangle something
 
Well some feedback, have to say, getdataback is amazing. Get all my mp3's back. The other files are still a mystery, but I'll play around with the settings, and also try some other recovery programs
 
I was also surprised that such a tiny prog(2MB) could outperform most of the other heavy weights(60+MB) in this sector .....
 
lucifir said:
I was also surprised that such a tiny prog(2MB) could outperform most of the other heavy weights(60+MB) in this sector .....
Click to expand...

I was amazed, last night someone told me of another little proggy that is amazing, think its called stellar phoenix, and after that I'll try ontrack and so on and so on, until I have my freakin pst file and some more files back
 
I would stay away from ontrack ... from personal experience :) ..... it caused more problems for me than fixing them ;)... will have to look into stellar phoenix
 
lucifir said:
I would stay away from ontrack ... from personal experience :) ..... it caused more problems for me than fixing them ;)... will have to look into stellar phoenix
Click to expand...

Well thanks for the advice, I'll save ontrack for the last possible way out, if nothign else works, then I know I have nothing to loose
 
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