"Lost/Invisible" NTFS Partition recovery...Help!

[Aditya11]

I have two HDD's with two partitions on each. Yesterday I re-installed Windows XP on the first HDD and to my horror XP detected only the first partition on second hdd...this 'lost' partition is NTFS and has about 30 GB of crucial data. In Disk Management too, it shows only the first partition on second HDD...I have tried follwoing tools with no help:

1.Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery v3.0- Successfully detects the second logical partition on second HDD with all the files and folders, but when I try to save them to other location, it wont allow me to coz its a demo version! duh. And no, so far I havent been able to "procure" serial for that.

2. Smart Data Recovery and Smart NTFS Recovey- both these tools DO NOT
show the "invisible/lost" partition at the starting prompt and so I cannot proceed as it requires you to first select the partition to find the lost data on.

3. PC Inspector File Recovery- Inconsistent Behaviour. Shows contents of only SOME folders, which I CAN recover, but doesnt at all show for ALL folders.

Then, I tried Linux Live! CD's...LinSpire and Ubuntu, to be specific. Both these OS'es DO show my partition, but I am unable to copy data to first HDD. It gives me "not sufficient permission" error. Will INSTALLING Linux allow me to create a new folder and copy data onto it??? Right now it doesnt even allow me to create a new folder. Is burning DVD easy on Ubuntu? I am totally n00b in Linux, obviously.

Can PLEASE anyone suggest me a solution (preferably in Windows) to recover this "invisible/lost" partition fully?? I would be really greatful.

Thanks in advance.

[vish786]

Imagine u have mounted ur partition on

/media/recover/ [mount point]

in terminal,

sudo chmod 777 -R /media/recover

then u can copy all/any files to different paritions.

[praka123]

^what vish said is correct.then..
u can use livecd to recover the data-but 30GB! will take time.boot up a live cd Ubuntu.
then open terminal and mount the partition manually.then as "sudo" or as root u can backup to where u want.for step-by-step help.do post in open source section if ur interested in Linux way to get ur data back.

[Aditya11]

Thanks a lot for replies guys.

@ vish789 & praka123

I followed the commands in Ubuntu and it made all the files and foldes in that partition as "read-only". But even then, I was not able to copy-paste the data to other partitions and I kept on getting the same error about not having permission.

SO, After many attempts of various kinds, FINALLY I was able to recover data...most of it, atleast. Here's what I did:


1. I recovered all the data that I possibly can using PC Inspector File Recovery.
2. In case of remaining data, I found that I could transfer data to Flash drive in Ubuntu! So, Ubuntu->Flash and then Flash->XP. I know that its too tedius, labourous, time consuming and un-smart way to work...but atleast it worked...and after all the failed tries of other kinds, this is the only thing that was giving results. So that's that.

On side note, I found Linux cool. Too bad my favourite games dont run on it. And it didnt allow me to configure the network (didnt save the DNS addresses). But thats the topic for open-source setion.