Partition magic7/write error/cant boot

[Guilo]

I really wasnt sure where to post this one.
I have winxp home. I have an 80 GB hard drive with one 5 gig and one 75 gig partition. I wanted to merge the two. I used partition magic and received an error at the very end(504). I looked on the website and it really didnt give me help.
Anyway, after the error message it rebooted and now it wont boot up. I get a disk write error, hit ctrl+alt+del to reboot. I dont know if something went wrong with the MBR or what.
I didnt want to do anything else until I did some research.
I do have some .jpgs on there that I don't really want to loose and that is all that is not backed up. I know that was a stupid thing to do.<slaps own hands> Is is possible to use boot disks and copy some files onto another hard drive? I do have another slave HD in the same PC.
The hard drive is an 80GB ibm deskstar.

Thanks guys and gals.
Guilo

 

[wolluf]

Have you got PM rescue disk set (you can boot PC from them, and use the dos version of PM)?

Are you using fat32 or ntfs filestore (if fat32, boot from win98 boot floppy and see if that can see either the merged or original partitions.

You may need a data recovery app to get your jpegs back.

 

[Guilo]

I couldnt get anything to recognize the HD.
I cut my losses and reinstalled after a format.
Live and learn.
Thanks for your help.