HDD Partition Recovery

BeerCheeze · Posted: Sat, 04 Mar 2006 11:54:25 Post Subject: HDD Partition Recovery

So it look like the partition info on the teenagers computer got fubared (most likely by some spyware or virus she downloaded), and I've tried the basics on recovering it to no avail (I have one last basic trick to try).

So now I'm looking for a tool to do this. I have found some off google of course, and the ones I've found all cost $$$. And I ain't spending more $$$ on it. So does anyone know any packages to recover lost partition info? It's a NTFS partition, but I'll throw together a *nix box if I have too (was gonna build one anyways) so what OS the package runs on doesn't mater.

Thanks!

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Sat, 04 Mar 2006 11:57:42 Post Subject:

You're fixing it? What happened to her books? Laughing

BeerCheeze · Posted: Sat, 04 Mar 2006 12:05:37 Post Subject:

I'm helping her... even if I get the partition recovered, she still has work to do. Which she will do.

And this is a little beyond basic system setup & recovery.

T-shirt · Posted: Sat, 04 Mar 2006 13:52:30 Post Subject:

this looks like it might work
http://www.partitionsupport.com/utilities.htm
and its free

edvallie · Posted: Sat, 04 Mar 2006 13:53:58 Post Subject:

Not sure exactly what your trying to accomplish, but something here might be useful.

http://www.linux.org/perl-bin/search_db?q=partition&qid=2&spp=100

BeerCheeze · Posted: Sat, 04 Mar 2006 14:12:51 Post Subject:

I'm actually looking for someone with some experience with a product... I can search Google myself.

Blue|Fusion · Posted: Sat, 04 Mar 2006 16:52:39 Post Subject:

Best idea I'd have would be to slap in the Win XP CD, and use the repair feature. I don't know what that's capable of, though. I don't think it will repair a partition, but it's worth a shot.

HackaX0rus · Posted: Sat, 04 Mar 2006 23:31:55 Post Subject:

repair works wonders...however if your os is corrupted sometimes the repair function wont recognise windows as being on that harddrive and wont let you repair...its worth a shot...

T-shirt · Posted: Sun, 05 Mar 2006 03:34:34 Post Subject:

No experience, but I know you need to avoid FDisk and similar utilities as just opening Fdisk writes to the partition table area, or in the case of a lost/missing partition overwrites that record. ie writes in the first 'open'/unused field.
booting from a cd should avoid disk writes, and give you a chance to probe a little with XP's disk management tools.

Blue|Fusion · Posted: Sun, 05 Mar 2006 11:50:49 Post Subject:

fdisk writes to the partition table just when it's opened? I find that hard to believe. I work with fdisk on live disks, and i won't write until I tell it it (but everything's got to be unmounted before hand).

But in theory (my theory), if you do use fdisk to re-write the partition data, it should work. The only catch is it has to be exactly how it was before. Each partition must be exact in the number of and starting/ending blocks. If you can do that and then write the partition table, it may just work again.