Restoring overwritten partition table?

hi guys

today when I switched on my laptop and the attached maxtor 500gig I got a popup which told me that my maxtor is not formatted and if I want to do it right now.
I clicked cancel, removed the drive and put it to another usb port with the same result.
then I tried a different laptop with the same result and thought ok thats it with the drive and its just 300gig of data I need...
then I remembered what I did yesterday. I tried to make an usb flash drive bootable with the hp tool (HPUSBF.exe). usually no problem but the drive was connected as well. I bought Partition Table Doctor from the internet and it tells me that the drive is marked as a Win95 Fat16. so it sounds conclusive that the hp tool caused the damage.
my question would be if there is a chance to reverse what the hp tool did.
at the moment partition table doc runs and runs and searches for the old table but doesn't look good as far as I see that.

thanks for help!

ok, solved. sorry for server space waste!

solution was to set the partition table system id back to 07:NTFS/HPFS and run fixboot again.
I highly recommend this software even if its not freeware! Partition Table Doctor

cheers, mscrx

Does Partition Table Doctor have any repair or restore backup option?

For a drive to be seen in Windows the drive must be Type 05 (extended partition)
You can use Partition magic ptedit32.exe or better yet gpart to fix the error.
But I cannot confirm if data loss due to change (but all the ones I've done worked without data loss)

FYI A list of partition types and numbers:
==========================================

# 00 - Freespace
# 01 - FAT12 (< 16 MiB)
# 02 - XENIX root file system
# 03 - XENIX /usr file system (obsolete)
# 04 - FAT16 (< 32 MiB)
# 05 - Extended (chain)
# 06 - FAT16B (> 32 MiB)
# 07 - Installable (HPFS or NTFS); QNX; Advanced Unix
# 08 - AIX; SplitDrive; OS/2 (through Version 1.3); Dell spanning multiple drives (array); Commodore DOS
# 09 - AIX; Coherent; QNX
# 0A - IBM Boot Manager; Coherent swap; OPUS
# 0B - FAT32
# 0C - FAT32X (INT13X)
# 0E - FAT16X (INT13X)
# 0F - Extended X (> 7.8 MiB)
# 11 - Hidden FAT12
# 12 - Compaq diagnostics
# 14 - Hidden FAT16; AST DOS with logical sectored FAT
# 16 - Hidden FAT16B
# 17 - Hidden Installable (HPFS or NTFS)
# 18 - AST Windows swap file
# 19 - Willowtech Photon coS
# 1B - Hidden FAT32
# 1C - Hidden FAT32X
# 1E - Hidden FAT16X
# 20 - Willowsoft Overture File System (OFS1)
# 21 - officially listed as reserved (HP Volume Expansion, SpeedStor variant)
# 21 - Oxygen FSo2
# 22 - Oxygen Extended
# 23 - officially listed as reserved (HP Volume Expansion, SpeedStor variant?)
# 24 - NEC MS-DOS 3.x
# 26 - officially listed as reserved (HP Volume Expansion, SpeedStor variant?)
# 31 - officially listed as reserved (HP Volume Expansion, SpeedStor variant?)
# 33 - officially listed as reserved (HP Volume Expansion, SpeedStor variant?)
# 34 - officially listed as reserved (HP Volume Expansion, SpeedStor variant?)
# 36 - officially listed as reserved (HP Volume Expansion, SpeedStor variant?)
# 38 - Theos
# 3C - PowerQuest recoverable
# 3D - Hidden NetWare
# 40 - VENIX 80286
# 41 - Personal RISC Boot; PowerPC boot; PTS-DOS 6.70 & BootWizard: Alternative Linux, Minix, & DR-DOS
# 42 - Secure File System; Windows 2000 (NT 5): Dynamic extended; PTS-DOS 6.70 & BootWizard: Alternative Linux swap & DR-DOS
# 43 - Alternative Linux native file system (ext2fs); PTS-DOS 6.70 & BootWizard: DR-DOS
# 45 - Priam
# 45 - EUMEL/Elan
# 46 - EUMEL/Elan
# 47 - EUMEL/Elan
# 48 - EUMEL/Elan
# 4A - ALFS/THIN lightweight filesystem for DOS
# 4D - QNX
# 4E - QNX
# 4F - QNX; Oberon boot/data
# 50 - Ontrack Disk Manager, read-only, FAT (Logical sector size varies)
# 51 - Ontrack Disk Manager, read/write, FAT (Logical sector size varies)
# 51 - Novell
# 52 - CP/M
# 52 - Microport System V/386
# 53 - Ontrack Disk Manager
# 54 - Ontrack Disk Manager 6.0
# 55 - EZ-Drive 3.05
# 56 - Golden Bow VFeature
# 5C - Priam EDISK
# 61 - Storage Dimensions SpeedStor
# 63 - GNU HURD
# 63 - Mach, MtXinu BSD 4.2 on Mach; Unix Sys V/386, 386/ix
# 64 - Novell Netware 286
# 65 - Novell Netware 3.11 & 4.1
# 66 - Novell Netware 386
# 67 - Novell Netware
# 68 - Novell Netware
# 69 - Novell Netware 5+; Novell Storage Services
# 70 - DiskSecure Multi-Boot
# 75 - IBM PC/IX
# 80 - Minix v1.1 - 1.4a; Old MINIX (Linux)
# 81 - Linux/Minix v1.4b+; Mitac Advanced Disk Manager
# 82 - Linux swap; Prime; Solaris
# 83 - Linux ext2
# 84 - OS/2 hiding type 04; APM hibernation, can be used by Win98
# 86 - NT FAT volume set
# 87 - HPFS FT mirrored; NT IFS volume set
# 93 - Hidden Linux ext2; Amoeba file system
# 94 - Amoeba bad block table
# 99 - Mylex EISA SCSI
# 9F - BSDI
# A0 - Phoenix NoteBios Power Management "Save to Disk"; IBM hibernation
# A1 - HP Volume Expansion (SpeedStor variant)
# A3 - HP Volume Expansion (SpeedStor variant)
# A4 - HP Volume Expansion (SpeedStor variant)
# A5 - FreeBSD/386
# A6 - OpenBSD
# A6 - HP Volume Expansion (SpeedStor variant)
# A7 - NextStep
# A9 - NetBSD
# AA - Olivetti DOS with FAT12
# B0 - part of Bootmanager BootStar by Star-Tools GmbH
# B1 - HP Volume Expansion (SpeedStor variant)
# B3 - HP Volume Expansion (SpeedStor variant)
# B4 - HP Volume Expansion (SpeedStor variant)
# B6 - HP Volume Expansion (SpeedStor variant)
# B7 - BSDI file system or secondarily swap
# B8 - BSDI swap or secondarily file system
# BB - PTS BootWizard
# BE - Solaris boot
# C0 - Novell DOS/OpenDOS/DR-OpenDOS/DR-DOS secured; CTOS
# C1 - DR-DOS 6.0 LOGIN.EXE-secured 12-bit FAT
# C2 - Reserved for DR-DOS 7+
# C3 - Reserved for DR-DOS 7+
# C4 - DR-DOS 6.0 LOGIN.EXE-secured 16-bit FAT
# C6 - Disabled NT FAT volume set
# C7 - Disabled NT IFS volume set; Syrinx/Cyrnix
# C8 - Reserved for DR-DOS 7+
# C9 - Reserved for DR-DOS 7+
# CA - Reserved for DR-DOS 7+
# CB - Reserved for DR-DOS secured FAT32
# CC - Reserved for DR-DOS secured FAT32X (LBA)
# CD - Reserved for DR-DOS 7+
# CE - Reserved for DR-DOS secured FAT16X (LBA)
# CF - Reserved for DR-DOS secured extended (LBA)
# D0 - Multiuser DOS secured (FAT12)
# D1 - Old Multiuser DOS secured FAT12
# D4 - Old Multiuser DOS secured FAT16 (<= 32M)
# D5 - Old Multiuser DOS secured extended
# D6 - Old Multiuser DOS secured FAT16 (BIGDOS > 32 Mb)
# D8 - CP/M 86
# DB - CP/M, Concurrent CP/M, Concurrent DOS; CTOS (Convergent Technologies OS)
# DE - Dell
# DF BootIt EMBRM
# E1 - SpeedStor 12-bit FAT extended
# E1 - DOS access (Linux)
# E2 - DOS read-only (Florian Painke's XFDISK 1.0.4)
# E3 - SpeedStor (Norton, Linux says DOS R/O)
# E4 - SpeedStor 16-bit FAT extended
# E5 - Tandy DOS with logical sectored FAT
# E6 - Storage Dimensions SpeedStor
# EB - BeOS
# ED - Reserved for Matthias Paul's Spryt*x
# F1 - SpeedStor Dimensions
# F2 - DOS 3.3+ second
# F2 - Unisys DOS with logical sectored FAT
# F3 - Storage Dimensions SpeedStor
# F4 - SpeedStor Storage Dimensions
# F5 - Prologue
# F6 - Storage Dimensions SpeedStor
# FD - Reserved for FreeDOS
# FE - PS/2 IML (Initial Microcode Load); LANstep; Storage Dimensions SpeedStor
# FF - Xenix bad-block table

Apologies posted when you posted, oh well I'll leave this info for others to use as reference