Partition Damaged due to Erroroneous Drive Image Restore

[thenoo]

I use XP Pro SP2 with all Partitons formatted to NTFS.

One of my hard drives is partitioned into C,E,F & G OF 8000 ,15000,24,000 & 10000 mb's respectively. I have D.I. files of all of these drives which I update every so often .

I was restoring a previous Image file of the C & E drive the other day and I got distracted in the "restore" operation and , inadvertently "restored" the C Image File into the E partition .

What seems to have happened here is that , the C Image File being an image of a 8000 MB partition has now resulted in the E Partition being divided into 2 partitons one of which has no E identification and is of 8000MB in size and the other is now designated "Unallocated Space" also with no identification which is of (15000-8000) MB in size. Thus I am now unable to restore the original E Partition from its D.I. file as it is too big to fit into the damaged E Partiton.

I have a copy of P.M. 6.0 which seems unable to restore the Parttions to the position and size they were in before this error ocurred.

I am , therefore , considering using FDISK to restore the drive to its previous state by re-formatting and re-partioning the entire drive.

Will FDISK be able to delete all the Partitions on this drive , including the unnamed 8000MB Partition and the "Unallocated Space " as well as all the other NTFS Partitions ? Must I use a dedicated "XP Pro" form of FDISK here?

Alternatively can I delete all present partitons on this drive , including the "no-longer named" E Parttion and also the "Unallocated Space" by using the XP Pro Installation CD instead of FDISK or does this CD only delete and re-form the C Boot Parttiton ?

If not , can anyone suggest a way of returning the drive to its original state ?

 

[rvnguy]

thenoo,

I assume that you are booting to/from the "C" drive. This "C" partition will be the primary partition with the remainder being "extended".

I would try to remove/delete all extended partitions. Reboot to insure that the primary is intact and functional.

If OK, repartition the unallocated space as you had before, i.e. 15000, 24000 & 10000. Reboot and check to see if these partitions are set, and format these new partitions.

Now you can restore your information to the new partitions.

Hope this helps


rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[thenoo]

I assume that you are booting to/from the "C" drive.".

I am .

"Reboot to insure that the primary is intact and functional"

I have and it is.


"I would try to remove/delete all extended partitions."

How do I do this - with FDISK or the XP Install Disk ?

 

[wolluf]

Are you using primary partitions or one extended partition with logical drives?

Have you tried XP's disk management feature? - run diskmgmt.msc (its a lot more powerful/user friendly than either fdisk or XP install's partitioning feature)

 

[Freestone]

Rather than trying to position and size partitions, why not use PartionMagic 6 to delete all partitions except C: followed by a restore of the E:, F:, and G: partitions using DriveImage? DriveImage creates partitions as needed (and deletes existing ones as you now know) so there is no point repartitioning the drive.

 

[Santei]

Hi thenoo.
Actually I always use partition expert to manage partitions. It seems to me the most conveniet software, as you could easily resize, copy, delete, create partitions using windows wozard.
I've never had any problem with it, and all my data was successfully saved.

 

[thenoo]

PROBLEM SOLVED !!

I got this sorted out by using PM 7.0 to delete the damaged Partition and then re-installing the previously saved E: Partition D.I. file.

Many thanks to all who replied.