Recover Harddrive Partition?

[dakota81]

Got a Western Digital 100gig drive that doesn't want to believe it has a partition on it. I realize the first mistake was using a Western Digital harddrive in the first place, but things happen and we have to try and move on.

More important question, is there some software out that might be able to reconstruct the partition table? We had a Drive Pro software years ago that did the trick, but we used that for like 100 or 200meg drives, I don't think it's scalable up to 100gig and Fat32. Plus I don't know where that disc went...

Any help?

 

[bgauntt]

I would use Partition Magic 7.0.

 

[dakota81]

Any insight on how to use Partition Magic to reconstruct a partition table?

 

[bgauntt]

What exactly do you mean by reconstruct? I know that Partition Magic can reformat or repair a particular partition and it can also convert a partition. I don't think I fully understand what you mean by reconstruct.

 

[dakota81]

What I mean is I've got a harddrive where the system thinks it's still unformatted - yet it's been working before and has about 45 gig of files on it. I want to find out if there's a software I can purchase that will search through the harddrive and reconstruct whatever needs to be reconstructed to regain access to the files and data.

I don't know exactly what needs to be done or what is wrong, I just know that the system thinks the drive is unformatted yet it has 45+ gig of files that I would like back.

 

[svtesan]

hello,
i think probably you should try some WD utils akin to maxblast.might be you partitioned using some special util rather than good(?) old fdisk.as for reconstructing partition table it is possible to do it easily.but be cautious.i have had many such previous experiences.this was the way i worked them out:

1)get hold of diskedit.exe and ndd.exe(norton disk docktor).both dos editions.have them on bootable flopp(ies)y.

2)copy your mbr using diskedit to a floppy first.

3)zero in your mbr[fill it with zeroes]

4)run ndd.it will ask if you have trouble in accessing partitions and then rebuild the partition tables for you.

5)you can also do it using debug/ndd.

if you have any difficulty,post them and i assure they will be answered immediately[i know how frustrating it is].but dont try anything haphazard and destroy data.better leave hdd in peace rather than mangling data if you dont know waht to do.
_imp_ CHECK FIRST IF YOU HAVE ANY DDO LIKE MAXBLAST OR ONTRACK OR EZDRIVE.if it does ,just reapply it.

it is worth paying a visit to wd website.

sorry if that was too long.

hope that helps you.

svtesan

 

[jmatt]

Try these 2 ways .

Start up with your Boot disc or Startup disk in ( without cd rom support )
At the A: prompt , type , sys c and then press ENTER.

Take out the boot disk & restart your computer.

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