Lost Partition

[Space_Cowboy]

I lost my partition through a stupid maneuver on my part. None the less, I've tried a few things such as recreating the MBR via Linux Unbuntu... that made it worse which totally made the partition unrecognizable to windows! I then pruchased a tool from Easus "Data Recovery Wizard". For any of you out there with a similar issue... don't use this product. Their plug-in used with BartPE called for a known spyware .dll file!!! I'm going to get PayPal to pull back my $90 I paid for this "tool".

With that said, does anyone know of a viable tool that will recover my partition FAT32/NTFS and files? It has to be able to do it from a bootable disk/CD being that I obviously can't boot into Windows XP Pro.

Thanks All.

 

[kimsland]

It's #07 time
https://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?p=570886

Good name too, I've heard that before somewhere.

 

[Space_Cowboy]

Yikes... Thats published by the same company that I bought "Data Recovery Wizard Pro" from. I might add that they "claimed" that the Pro version would perform everything that Standard DRW & Partition Doctor does. Here's the biggy which I mentioned in my original post... the plug-in that you download from their site to use in BartPE references a known SpyWare .dll file.

Thanks, but I don't think I want to touch any of their other software.

Any other software suggestions?

The nick is from the movie Space Cowboys which I like. I grew up always wanting to be an astronaut, and I'm native Texan... so the nick fits

 

[kimsland]

Are you speaking of Ptedit (no problems with that program)
Or Gparted (please try this CD ISO download)

 

[Space_Cowboy]

The person in that thread was asking about Partition Table Doctor. I assumed you were suggesting using that software. Of the other two (Ptedit & Gparted), which do you think is more successful?

 

[Nodsu]

Neither of these will be successful in finding your deleted partition. You can only create partitions with them.

Yes, if you create a new partition with exactly the same parameters as the one you lost, you will get your data back.

gpart, not gparted is a tool that can scan a disk and tries to guess partitions.


And of course, it would be nice if you told us how exactly you "lost" your partition. Maybe it's not even worth trying to get it back..

 

[Space_Cowboy]

Well, as I stated, it was patially my fault. I got some spyware that was really slowing down my laptop. McAffe, Ad-ware, or Spybot could not see it even in safe mode. As I was shutting down my system, it was taking a really long time and I got spooked. I hard shut down the system which I think corrupted my MBR. I didn't have my XP Pro disk with me (went on a trip), so the techie at Dell told me to use Ubuntu to repair the MBR. The blue screen error which I had been receiving prior then turned into a "Invalid Partition Table" error after I performed the Ubuntu MBR fix. Some fix! So thats how it happened.

Correct me if I'm wrong... but if I create a new partition on my drive (that lost the partition), I won't be able to recover files from the lost partition will I?

 

[Space_Cowboy]

What do y'all think of SpinRite 6.0? Sounds like it what I need. It boots from its own free DOS and recovers partitions/data in place by using unused sectors and swapping recovered data back and forth.

 

[kimsland]

Well if you're talking about licenced software, I'd go for Partition Magic
You can download a trial HERE, or you can get Partition Magic and Ghost HERE

That's what I use

 

[Space_Cowboy]

Thanks for the information kimsland!

 

[Nodsu]

A hard shutdown does not damage the MBR. When doing an unclean shutdown, you lose all the data that is not written to the disk yet. No data is ever written to the MBR during normal computer operation.

I would guess that your hard drive itself was and is bad. Try running the diagnostics utility provided by the drive maker to make sure.