Recover NTFS Partitions : Fixed by TEST DISK !!!

[klinux]

Ok , Disk Management SCREWED up my partitions big time .

had

c: fat32
d: ntfs
e: ntfs
f: ntfs
g: ntfs

remaining ext3 towards the end

Finally had 12 GB of free partition

Tried to convert the last 12 GB to Primary with disk management . it said all letters would be changed once it is done . I said Yes . It rearranged the partition table to

c:fat32
d:ntfs
70 gb free ( which was the remaining ntfs and ext3 put together )
and
12gb created

Was able to boot into 98 and but d: showed up as FAT instead of NTFS .
So used fixboot and fixmbr on d: and disk . Now affect .
Deleted 12gb from Recovery console (which was still working thanks to win98 fat32 )

Now . Got back D: NTFS . but still remaining 70 gb shows as blank .

HOW do i recover these partitions . I havent touched them , so probably the data is intact .

Misplaced my Samsung disk manager CD , which i normally use to recover from backup of MBR's . Any other tools to recover NTFS partition ????

[theraven]

dude u seriously messed up ur mbr
anyways the reason d showed fat was cuz ur last 12 gb that u made primary became c
therefore c became d

to the data recovery part of ur question
please search the forum
http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/view...=data+recovery
uim giving one link cuz ive given 4 in that one

[klinux]

@rave : thanx .

Tried the samsung DM . Doesnt get back the old partitions .

i think forum search doesnt like me . I tried searching those terms and a couple more , but didnt get the links i wanted . Very odd . anyways .

got a few utilities like test disk and others . will try ur links too

[klinux]

was able to recover the data , thanks to stellar phoenix ntfs . couple of q's

- Best s/w to backup and restore mbr / partition table in case of a mess

- IMPORTANT : which folder holds the save games for MANHUNT ???


- whats the knoppix utility to fix partitions . had the disk , but not sure which is the utility to fix ext3 partitions

- is there no s/w where i just restore the partition , instead of extracting files ??? have test disk from pcq mag , hope it works , but sounds complicated .

- does fixmbr / fixboot /fdisk / disk management have ANY use at all ??? tried them but they dont seem to have any effect . disk management only shows stuff as "HEALTHY" and next min even if all the data is gone , still "HEALTHY" . is MS trying to make us think optimistically even if our data is gone ????

- anyone here use an app called goback . seems norton bought it now . is it the same as the gateway goback ?

@rave : since u been around the forum a lot and know which is where , why can't we have a "ask raven" or "raven's heaven corner" where raven finds answers to unanswered posts in the forum . will be helpful for oldies and new folks too . or atleast raven should have a thread with all answered threads from the forum , listed in a long list eg like asus forums . similar to what gnurag did for open source , list of covered topics

@gnurag : man me sticking to oss/lin/gnu s/w to troubleshoot . Should have used the tool u said to create primary partition . MS going down .

[klinux]

TEST DISK fixed the whole thing in MINUTES . UNBELIEVABLE !!!!!

http://www.freshmeat.net/projects/testdisk
http://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk_doc/GetTestDisk.html
http://www.pcquest.com/content/hands.../104093003.asp

Just to be sure , i tried to recover important data with stellar phoenix . I can tell u one thing . It takes hellava lot of time for the bird to rise from the ashes . After nearly 6 hours of searching all through the night (slept from 3am-5:50am) . all this to recover just 20gb from ntfs , i lost hope for the 4 linux partitions long back . Finally checked the article on test disk in oct issue . ran the win2k version , but got errors

"TestDisk 5.5, Data Recovery Utility, November 2004
Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org>
http://www.cgsecurity.org
Please wait...
Disk /dev/sda - CHS 14596 255 63 - 114494 MB, sector size=512

Terminfo file is missing
TestDisk need 25 lines to work.
Please enlarge the terminal and restart TestDisk.
TestDisk exited normally.
"
thought it screwed things up koz it showed /dev/sda instead of /dev/hdc (my drive) .

since i had win98 running , ran dos version from dos in win98 , even though it was stated to use a new clean drive ( i take risks ) .

was astonished to see my partitions listed along with VOLUME LABELS . it was a beautiful site . looked below and found linux too . YIPPIE !!! . that too without a lot of scanning . mind u this is a messed up 120 gb hdd @5400 .

tried following instructions , tried just the first ntfs partition which was screwed , and wrote . next tried just one ext3 partition and wrote , quit , restarted and VOILAA !!!!!!!!!
all headaches went away and surprised to see that one write operation fixed the other partitions too . Took backup with Samsung DM and now HAPPY . all this done on Free s/w . i think its even opensource . this beats all the other paid disk utilities by a mile

[GNUrag]

Originally Posted by klinux

- whats the knoppix utility to fix partitions . had the disk , but not sure which is the utility to fix ext3 partitions

Use GNU Partition Editor:
# parted
there's a gui version also, # qtparted

You might also want to use # cfdisk , a really nice partition editor

Originally Posted by klinux

@rave : since u been around the forum a lot and know which is where , why can't we have a "ask raven" or "raven's heaven corner" where raven finds answers to unanswered posts in the forum . will be helpful for oldies and new folks too . or atleast raven should have a thread with all answered threads from the forum , listed in a long list eg like asus forums . similar to what gnurag did for open source , list of covered topics

Well that takes a lot of time end efforts... It was easy for me to make a list of topics in OpenSource section coz that section was just started a couple of weeks back.

Originally Posted by klinux

@gnurag : man me sticking to oss/lin/gnu s/w to troubleshoot . Should have used the tool u said to create primary partition . MS going down .

Just troubleshooting??? Why not use it for daily work???