the disappearing partition, wait there it is but where is it

[opalized]

May God be my Witness, i didnt hit the delete button?
go onsite, customers machine is dead slow then WHAM rightin front of my eyes it jus shuts off (what the heck do i do now)
I pull the side cover promtly burn 2 fingers to the bone, recklessly clamping down on the heatsink with those crisp fingers like it was an apple.
So i let it cool down take it outside and un tangle the family cat from the heatsink and fan. and recommend a new system this one is sure to be on its last legs, due to overheating.
I bring a new p-4 celeron, 512 ddr mem, asus via chipset motherboard out to replace a 1.25 athlon running on via chipset DFI board. Now begins the fun im gonna slide her xp (home pro) harddrive intot he new system come up in safe mode install the needed new drivers and reboot walla one new machine
WRONG WRONG WRONG
it blue screens and goes into a perpetual bootup, apon bringing it down out of safe mode after installing drivers
i go into recovery console, jus replace a couple files from the cab file in (system and config), WRONG ACCESS DENIED
harddrive error i believe, so heres where i step on my (you KNOW) male body part, i type bootcfg without a clue what it is, after typing help in rescue panel
DRIVES GONE, its there but i cant get within a hundred miles of the data now and it wont boot anything ntldr missing error
I bring it home plug the drive in my XP PRO CORP machine, disk manager says i got a 33 gig drive running fat active healthy, at letter E, i go to my computer, and ive got 10 meg available free total
Boot to 98 disk type fdisk, details tab got 8 meg front and 33 meg rear, the partition is fat and active, boot Susi and KNOPPIX from CD they will see anything fat, fat16,fat32,NTFS, linux, its right there in front of me but cant see it for anything keeps telling me my 33 gig has 10 gig free and theres nothing on any 10 of it, but wont show me the 33 gig section for nothing
No overlay software from a previous install, no passwords, no backup or private or hidden or secret anything that anyone is aware of, but that 33 gigs is locked tight?????
any help greatly appreciated

 

[opalized]

line 7 from bottom above should read 33 gig not meg, and line 5 from bottom should read 10 meg instead of gig, im sure most of you figured that out quicker than it took both my fingers to type this

 

[Freestone]

Perhaps it's time to try some data recovery tools.

Runtime Software GetDataBack:

http://www.runtime.org/

(Freeware) PC INSPECTOR File Recovery:

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

 

[opalized]

thanks for the reply, and great piece of software, ill give it a try and let ya know
sincerely
Dave

 

[johnodq]

If the system was XP then it was probaly in NTFS format which 98 will be unable to view.

With XP you will have to do an over install as it has a thing called the "HAL" or "Hardware Abstraction Layer" which is created during installation.

Unlike 98 it will not just redetect the hardware, you need to build a new HAL.

The simplest way to do this is to boot from the XP CD, choose install but then choose repair at the 2nd option, DO NOT CHOOSE REPAIR AT THE 1st OPTION, as this will take you into a command line used for config, repair etc.

If the drive was connected to another NT or XP system then it should show the details but NTFS will prevent access to certain files if they were password protected.

XP uses NTFS by default and when partitioning the drive creates an 8Mb section for it's own use.

---------------
Johnodq
---------------
Please let me know if the advice I give is of help.
Feedback will benefit all

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[opalized]

Thanks John, and you are correct it was xp home i beleive and ntfs, but when it was all said and done, the drive was registering as FAT, well we both know fat and 33 gigs dont go together. Ive downloaded the software Freestone recommended, and im currently running it on a drive i screwed up and deleted a bunch of stuff on, and it would appear ts gonna bring a large chunk of that data back, not quite sure yet, but looks promising, and that drive wasnt appearing as anything but there, meaning fat, fat16, fat32, or ntfs, so it gives me great home in retrieving my customers data from the fat drive i screwed up this past week. Thanks a million for all the input, and only hope i can help one of you one day
Sincerely
Dave