ibe98765 Posted October 17, 2004 Share Posted October 17, 2004 I was doing a number of operations including merging 2 partitions (one with data, one empty) using Partition Magic 8.0.1. Reboot was required and all operations worked EXCEPT for this merge.Somehow, the original partition (with the data) got unallocated and the 2nd adjacent partition (which WAS unallocated space) became active. I noticed on the error log from PM after it completed its work that 5 clusters were lost. I didn't think this was anything to worry about but when I rebooted into WinXP, I discovered that the original partition is now unallocated space and I've lost all the data that was on the original partition. Meanwhile, the 2nd partition has picked up the drive letter of the original.But the partition is sitting there as unallocated space and I haven't done anything to try and recover it yet. I think the data should still be there since I didn't do a format on the drive. I need any experience you may have had with this yourself or ideas on how I might try to recover this partition and the data on it. REMEMBER - this is UNALLOCATED space, so Windows does not recognize it as anything real. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibe98765 Posted October 17, 2004 Author Share Posted October 17, 2004 Well, I've spent most of the night on this project. I searched the net and downloaded a couple of trial tools that claim to do the job. I tried the cheaper one first (Active@ Undelete $40). But the demo can only restore files less than 64k. But it looked like it would work, so I anted up for the full version. Turned out to be not as good as I expected. I have lot's of issues with the UI and it has to be babysat since it stopped dead whenever it generated an error msg. About halfway through its estimated run, it locked up and stopped doing anything. I got some files out of it, but not all that I needed (and it was only 50% done when it locked). Funny thing is that I had a full backup of the deleted drive and got rid of it a couple of weeks ago when I decided to move things around on the new system. Should have waited a bit. Moral of the story - if you don't take regular backups, one day, you may make a mistake or some application you are using may screw-up and you may wind up losing stuff that you can't ever get back (unless you have a lot of $$$ or a friend at the NSA)... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted October 17, 2004 Share Posted October 17, 2004 On the Partition Magic boot floppy disc 1 there is a DOS app called ptedit.exe (boot the first disk and press ctrl-c to kill the autoexec.bat file at the prompt for the second disk) that can show you your partition table and lets you fix it. You may be able to see all the partitions. The key is the first column called "Type". NTFS partitions should have the value 07. If it doesn't change it and then click the Write button. If its in the extended partition, you can get to it by highlighting the extened partition row and then click on the EPBR button to get to the logical partition. Each logical partition is accessed by clicking on the EPBR of the previous logical partition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibe98765 Posted October 17, 2004 Author Share Posted October 17, 2004 Too late for that I fear since I had recreated the logical drive initially, thinking I need to do so to get access to the data. After I read up on some of these commercial programs, I found that I didn't need to do that and probably corrupted some data. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted October 17, 2004 Share Posted October 17, 2004 Doh! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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