partition table accidently lost

[himtuna]

hi guys, experimenting with things pays a lot

windows XP on drive c:\
drive d:\ and e:\ NTFS partitions
and rest 20 GB for flavouring linux.

had installed PCBSD on it
then booted the ubuntu ultimate... after successful live boot
i thought of giving a try to it over PCBSD....... opened the installer......
......... lost the partition table ......( dont know what had happened)

now disk is showing up c+d+e+ pcbsd space as linux ext
and rest 2 gb as swap.......

I have given a try to partition magic. but the things dont work......

I had put that hdd in an external case.

how do i recover the DATA man?????
windows disk manager doesnot show up anything except healthy partition.

what to do now please tell me?

[debsuvra]

Originally Posted by himtuna

hi guys, experimenting with things pays a lot

windows XP on drive c:\
drive d:\ and e:\ NTFS partitions
and rest 20 GB for flavouring linux.

had installed PCBSD on it
then booted the ubuntu ultimate... after successful live boot
i thought of giving a try to it over PCBSD....... opened the installer......
......... lost the partition table ......( dont know what had happened)

now disk is showing up c+d+e+ pcbsd space as linux ext
and rest 2 gb as swap.......

I have given a try to partition magic. but the things dont work......

I had put that hdd in an external case.

how do i recover the DATA man?????
windows disk manager doesnot show up anything except healthy partition.

what to do now please tell me?

You said your whole partition table is lost and C+D+E+PCBSD is appearing as one drive. But you also said

Originally Posted by himtuna

windows disk manager doesnot show up anything except healthy partition.

How is that possible ? Do u have the Windows installation intact ?

Well I fear that you may tried to installed Ubuntu and when the installer started and the paritition option menu appered, you unknowingly selected the automatic partitioning system which made the whole drive as one partition and 2 GB for swap.

[himtuna]

now what to do ????
tried pc inspector..... but taking too long to recover the data??

[Krazy_About_Technology]

Dude i think while installing linux you used the default partitioning scheme or the use full hdd option accidently that caused this problem. Try the Ultimate boot cd. It contsins a tool, dont remember its name, its called testtool i think. It can recover partitions, but not if you have done a lot of changes. Moreover its a text mode tool, so its a little cryptic to use. But it saved my Vista installtion thrice.

[himtuna]

ok i try that tool!
yes i choosed the defualt intallation thinking that it will ask me to resize the pcbsd partition and not take over the entire hdd.