Partition magic 8.0 really big problem!

[tomic888]

hi all,
i have external hard disk 500 gb, it is fat32 so i wanted to convert it to ntfs.
i have 400 gb on it so i wanted to convert it without losing data, so i started everything was going ok, then error pumped out, i dont remember what it said, something like wrong number or something, and process stopped and it said that remaining actions are cancelled. then i went to my computer and wanted to go in my HD but it says its unreadable, in partition magic My HD is written as ??! (F, and it shows its NTFS, what can i do?
i have so important data on it
thanks

 

[Archean]

Well I no longer have partition magic nor i can install it as i am on x64 windows. So I guess it will be done totally from memory. I think there was repair option buried somewhere in the partition magic; probably something like recover partition? can you find it?

Did you ever made backup of your data? (i'm guessing you didn't .........)

 

[tomic888]

i cant find the option, and i didnt make backup, it says that drive is unreadable and corrupted, i see it happened to thousands of people on net, what can i do?

 

[Archean]

I will try to keep this as simple as i could to start without having to resort to dos type console base stuff; if you look carefully at the attached picture (it is from partition wizard a similar but freeware program like partition magic), you can see in the left hand panel an option of "Partition Recovery" I've used it few times and its a hit & miss; but atleast it is easier to try.

If you are still unable to find something like this in partition magic you can try to download partition wizard and see how it works out.

 

[tomic888]

i have partition wizard too, i forgot that i tried the recovery option, when it finished i could get into the hd but there was nothing, it was empty, then i turned the hd off and on, and again i couldnt get into the drive, it was the same message ''unreadable and corrupted'''. i didnt mention this, after the recovery option it asked me what to keep and what not, i checked to keep data, but not some boot thing, so today when i turned my pc on, it couldnt boot, it said boot file is missing, i recovered my pc with windows 7 installation disk. have some opinions?

 

[tomic888]

sry one more thing i forgot, after converting hd to ntfs with partition magic, it said that i need to format the drive if i want to use it, i clicked cancel and then the first time i couldnt get into my hd.
(windows asked me to format the drive, not program)

 

[Archean]

If you were simply 'converting' your partition to ntfs from fat32 or whatever it was; you shouldn't get 'format' dialogue box. Anyway, for future reference, if you just want to convert a partition, you can use windows native partition conversion utility (synatx example is given hereunder):

Convert x:/fs:ntfs

Where x = your drive letter

For recovering data from your damaged ntfs partition try ntfs undelete from this page.

 

[tomic888]

i simply converted with partition magic, but there was a mistake, it didnt finished, it showed remaining operations are cancelled

 

[Archean]

Scrap the ntfs undelete post .. sorry

Re-read it like this.


Use PCInspector File Recovery from the above linke to recover your partition.

If that is successful you can then use ntfs undelete from the same link to try to recover y our data.

 

[tomic888]

i solved the problem finally!!!, so happy, i solved it with checkdisk in read and fix error mode, thanks for help

 

[Archean]

ah .... the good old chkdsk; simply i forgot about it;
well good to hear that its fixed

if you want to convert it to ntfs you can do it i think as chkdsk would have removed any file/folder errors/cross referenced files etc.

 

[DelJo63]

OH YES! before performing any partition actions (including defrag) we should always run CHKDSK /F first to avoid major issues.