200Gig HD, 3 Partitions.
1st partition = 30Gig XP system partition
2nd partition = data
3rd partition = data
Tried to do a repair installation of XP, repair was not an option, so I followed some little tutorial thing I found where I copied ntldr and ntdetect.com from the XP disk, then deleted the boot.ini (this may be incredibly stupid, I'm not sure).
Anyways, repair then became an option so I tried it, but kept getting errors. While in the middle of a repair installation I was asked to find a driver using the windows explorer, and during that I copied some files form the system partition to the 2nd partition to save incase i had to reformat the system partition. Couldn't get XP fixed.
So I stuck in a new 320Gig HD, created a partition, and installed XP on it. Got it up and running and then noticed that my 2nd and 3rd partitions of the original 200Gig drive were not showing up. I ran Partition Magic and it showed it as "free space". Then I ran Partition Table Doctor, which was able to detect and record the 3rd partition, but the 2nd partition area is still shown as "unallocated space". These are the only two HD utilities I've used, so if anyone knows of another that might work better, please let me know.
So yeah, I'd like to get this 2nd partition back. It's most likely a logical problem, the hard drive isn't very old and has always run well (although it is a maxtor). A data recovery company told me they could do it for like $2000... I'm not quite that desperate yet.
Any ideas would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks a lot!
1st partition = 30Gig XP system partition
2nd partition = data
3rd partition = data
Tried to do a repair installation of XP, repair was not an option, so I followed some little tutorial thing I found where I copied ntldr and ntdetect.com from the XP disk, then deleted the boot.ini (this may be incredibly stupid, I'm not sure).
Anyways, repair then became an option so I tried it, but kept getting errors. While in the middle of a repair installation I was asked to find a driver using the windows explorer, and during that I copied some files form the system partition to the 2nd partition to save incase i had to reformat the system partition. Couldn't get XP fixed.
So I stuck in a new 320Gig HD, created a partition, and installed XP on it. Got it up and running and then noticed that my 2nd and 3rd partitions of the original 200Gig drive were not showing up. I ran Partition Magic and it showed it as "free space". Then I ran Partition Table Doctor, which was able to detect and record the 3rd partition, but the 2nd partition area is still shown as "unallocated space". These are the only two HD utilities I've used, so if anyone knows of another that might work better, please let me know.
So yeah, I'd like to get this 2nd partition back. It's most likely a logical problem, the hard drive isn't very old and has always run well (although it is a maxtor). A data recovery company told me they could do it for like $2000... I'm not quite that desperate yet.
Any ideas would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks a lot!
