Lost Partitions

[robcarr]

Hi All,

I used to have 2 HDD in my pc, 40gb and 160gb, 160gb had the operating system on it and was formatted to 2 partitions each approx 64gb (drives(d and E), I removed the 40gb as I didnt really need for this system (drive c), I then set the jumpers on the 160gb to master single (i think) when i turned the pc on it said about not a bootable disk, (not usual non system disk, but a diff error) and I can get the old partitions to do anything or get to them, I then put the win xp disk in and reinstalled XP but it would only let me format 32gb on the disk(the remaining space), I need to know how to get the old data back, BIOS shows the disk as a 32gb HDD and so does new xp version,

Is there anything I can do to get it back as I need the data on the 2 64gb drives.
A friend at work suggested to use partition magic 8 to get the data.



Hope this is of use, Rob.

 

[TekTippy4U]

XP will only let you create FAT32 up to 32GB (thanks billy)
NTFS has no limit on partition size..this is done to force you to use NTFS.

Get updated Fdisk;

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;263044&Product=w98

but since you already partitioned and installed OS on that drive....maybe partition magic or Slave the drive to try and retreive data off it that way

TT4U

Notification:
These are just my thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions.
Backup All Important Data/Docs

 

[wolluf]

You need a data recovery app to try retrieving your data - but as you've reformatted and reinstalled XP, there's a good chance you've overwritten at least some of it. Couple of commercial data recovery apps recommended by users here:-

http://www.webattack.com/get/filescavenger.html

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

There's a commonly recommended free one - but if original partitions were ntfs it won't work:-

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

But, you've also got the issue of what's happened to your drive. As TT4U says, XP will only create max 32GB Fat32 partition - but you're saying bios is reporting the drive as 32GB, which is a different situation.

Couple of questions - does the bios definitely support 160GB drive? (eg, you didn't use overlay software to overcome a bios limitation previously?). Does the drive have a limiting jumper (presumably you changed the jumper when you made the 160GB drive master), that you've set by mistake? (some drives have this for backward compatibility with older bioses - and 32GB is a common value as its a common bios max HD size).

btw - if you'd posted when you hadthe first problem, we could have helped you. All that happened was you removed the drive with the o/s boot sector (XP always uses 1st partition on first drive if it can). You could have:-

reconnected the 40GB drive (assuming you'd not wiped it)
or
created a new boot sector on 160GB drive (need files ntldr, ntdetect.com & boot.ini - then use fixboot command from recovery console).
or
create an XP 'boot floppy', by copying 3 files mentioned above to a floppy disk. This will boot XP

Options 2&3 would require creating a boot.ini & then you might have problems if your pagefile was defined on C:.

Any, HTH, and please post back if you need more.

 

[tomaso11]

Robcarr,If you havent overwritten PM8 will probably repair your drive but please clarify,

I used to have 2 HDD in my pc, 40gb and 160gb, 160gb had the operating system on it and was formatted to 2 partitions each approx 64gb (drives(d and E), I removed the 40gb as I didnt really need for this system (drive c).

Drive C usually contains the operating system.So you now have one 160gb drive with XP installed on a 32gb partition 'C' with possibly (hopefully) two hidden partitions containing your data 'D' & 'E'

Which file system are you using Fat32 or NTFS ?
What Drive Letters are assigned to your optical drives?

Thomas

So...who actually cans the worms then?