hard drive partition map overwritten by accident 2

[jlindenbaum]

Hi there,

I have a problem. I was being stupid. I know exactly what I did wrong, just not how to undo it.

I have a 120GB Samsung HDD which I was using as a WIN HDD. It had 2 partitions one 20 just for system and programmes and 100 for files and games etc.

The other day I bought a newe Harddrive for some Linux distro's I wanted to try out. The HDD was set to Cable Select. I plugged it into the Master of the IDE cable. The 120GB was set to Master, yet plugged into the slave, don't even ask me why, dunno why or when I did that.

So I wanted to install Suse 9.0 Pro.

It, because thinking the master it's writing on is the Samsung not the New Western Digital, overwrites the Windows partition map.

I can now not boot into windows any more - only Linux.

As YaST was formatting and stalled at 49% I realized what I had done and Power offed the comp and fix the setup. The WD is now set as slave and the Samsung as master and they have the proper connections.


My actual Question. Is there a way to undo the changes to the Samsung HD? So that the swap and root which were the 9GB together starting on block 0, so it overwrote the windows OS :|, back to the old partition map?

As I said the Samsung was 2 paritions 20GB and 100GB. The 20 was the first to be set. So actually my important files in my apache htdocs folder which is on D should still be there,because only the first 9GB were overwritten?

thanks so much in advance, Sorry the article has gotten a bit long!

Regards,

Johannes Lindenbaum

 

[firewolfrl]

well, mmmm!
I think your best option is to to look into some data recovery software.
unplug the drive you want to save then I would install windows on the drive you were going to put linux on.
replug the drive back as a SLAVE and run the recovery software
do not have the drive installed till you are ready to recover or restore the partitions.
there are a lot of people out there with the links to the recovery software and I will let them post it for you

 

[jlindenbaum]

thanks for the reply!

I was thinking something like this:

I have another Windows Computer.

Maybe install that 120GB Samsung (the broken one) into the other PC.
On that PC install, as you said, the Racovery Software and recover the Samsung then. Should that work?

 

[firewolfrl]

that should work
though as I said Do Not put the drive in any computer till you are ready to get the data off
I personally use winternals ERD. but, I paid alot for that software because I neeeded it for my business. there are a lot of software out there and I would post what you find and listen to other posts and narrow it down to what software you will be using.
one of the things to look for is software that does not need to look for a drive letter and reads the raw partiton.

 

[garebo]

getdataback is one such program i believe. Costs less than winternals and does the job i have heard.



Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[jlindenbaum]

Thanks guys!

I will do that! Now I have something to do when I get home from school other than studying for friggn math :|


Thanks again,

Johannes