Lost my partition!

My pc was running windows 2000 pro. I had three hard drives c:, d:, and an external drive g: that I used for database storage and install programs. Today I upgrade to windows XP pro. I did a clean install and told the install program to format my c drive, thinking I had copies of all the install programs on my g: drive. When the install program asked if I wanted to remove partitions I said yes and removed them all. C drive was an ntfs drive as was drive d. g drive however was fat32.

First of all, the install program renamed the drives. It renamed my main boot drive (formerly c drive) to drive E. It renamed my g: drive and named it C. thinking I was removing the partitions of my c drive I selected this one. So now I have no partitions on my former g drive. Its now sitting there like one big blob. Full of programs and data and music that I cannot access. Windows XP see's the drive. But it cant tell me anything that's on it or even it's capacity. It just calls it local disk C and for capacity , it says "raw ".

Can anyone tell me how to regain access to this storage drive? I need direction as to how to perhaps reinstall the fat32 partition or whatever it takes to get my stuff off of there. Ultimately I'll make it an NTFS drive as well, but first things first. After that, I'd like to know how to relable the drives properly so that my C drive is my main drive as it's always been and this storage drive that I cant access and is now being called C drive is labled something else.

My KINDOM for some HELP!

Scott M

 

If you are very, very lucky, that is true. Most likely the drive is full of nothing but empty space or possibly full of data you can't get back without some very fancy data recovery. No way to tell at this point and even checking moves the chances of usable data on the drive closer to Zero.

For now, unplug the former G drive and put it someplace safe.

Easiest way I can think of to get the drive lettering back like you want it is to also remove which ever other hard drive you don't want as your system drive and then load the OS on whatever hard drive you wish. Then easy enough to add other drives back as data drives and set their drive letter to whatever you wish using the XP device manager.

Once you get a working OS on the PC and your other internal hard drive set up as whatever you want it, post back and we'll attack the data recovery piece.

 

re: data recovery

I do have XP loaded on the drive I wish it to be on. It's just being called drive E by the system instead of local disk C. So right now I have 2 internal drives. My primary internal (booting) drive with XP loaded is currently being called E and a second internal drive with nothing on it (except that it's NTFS formatted) is being called C.

Ive unplugged the removable drive and await your reply. Thanks.

Scott M

 

re: lost partition

Oops! My bad. My second drive with nothing on it is currently called D.....which is what is was called before I started all this mess. XP renamed the removable G drive as local disk C. But since Ive removed it...windows now just sees the 2 internal drives....E and D. (of course it also sees the floppy, the dvd drive and the cd drive.)

 

re: lost partition

It is hard to say if the only thing that was done is partitons removed or if it was formated to. Go to WinHex and download winhex. Extract it to a folder. The program is free to try.

Once extracted find WinHex.exe and run it, do not know what setup.exe is for mybe if you buy program. 'i am useing it with win98'

In winhex goto -Tools/Open Disk in drop down box select Physical Media\ your bad hdd

do you see below tool bar a small box labled Access, if so select partiton 1/open. does it list the root directory ? if it does we can go from there, when you post back.

 

You might try some free recovery programs to see if they find anything on that drive.

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/welcome.htm
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Even if partitioned and formatted, the data should still be intact if the drive wasn't zeroed.

You may also want to look at some partition recovery software.

http://www.partition-recovery.com/

This one is free, but I haven't used it in quite a while so I can't give you any reliable advice on its functioning:

http://users.adelphia.net/~abraxas/dl/partfix.exe
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As far as your drive lettering goes, you'll need to reinstall XP, following Newt's sage advice. Disconnecting all drives other than the one you are installing to will insure that C: is an unused drive letter and will assign it to the newest partition (but be sure to delete all partitions from that drive before starting so that there are no partitions available anywhere on your machine---C: will then be assigned to the first one you create).

There are methods of changing the system drive letter, but they are unreliable and incomplete. They also will end up taking more time and trouble than a complete reinstallation will take.

 

No joy with any of these, Abraxis. none of the programs were able to see the missing drive. Thats' strange when you think about it since even XP itself can see that there is a drive out there. I did seem to have some success with Winhex but not sure if it's just false hope or true progress.

I did follow the winhax instructions as posted and here's where Im at:

Clicked on the Access box
box opened up with 2 options:First option:. Partition 1 (149 GB?)
this IS the storage drive in question. I clicked on this and a box opened with these options: Open
Partition table
Partition table (template)
Boot sector
Clone partition (as source)
Clone partition (as destination)

Since none of these options are exactly what I was told to look for, Im kind of at a standstill, not knowing what to do next. I know with a program of this type...you either know what you're doing or you mess things up ROYALLY.
I await your next strategy. Thank you

Scott M

 

I've just downloaded Winhex a couple of days ago myself, but did find out unless you but the program it will not write the the hdd. But it will show the needed data to use with a different free program to write infor to the partition table.

My OS with winhex has gone south for now, so can not verify everything I say first. In the Access box select option\open and hopefuly you will see the root directory. the infor needed will be , in the partiton template or mybe boot template , the data will be totol partiton size . After I fix my OS will post later.

 

In the Access box click on ' Partition table (template)' in the new box under Bios Paramater Block need data from ' Hidden Sectors', next one down "Sectors(on large Volumes)' . the hidden sectors will be 63 if the partition is primary, Sectors(on large vol) is the total sectors for partition. Also post the offset address at left of "Sectors(on lar. Vol) ,will tell me if partition is pri. or ext.

You will need a disk editor program, WinHex if you buy it or
1) Diskedit.exe - on some of Norton CD's
2)HDD edit programs go down to #5 Disk Probe( have not used), or to near bottom of page to FREE HARD DRIVE EDITOR PTS-DE

You need to read Partition Table info

 

Depending how handy you are with things like this, you may want to try putting that external drive inside for recovery purposes. The recovery programs are far more likely to see files you want if it is connected to a standard IDE connection. And the partition repair programs won't see the drive from the floppy, either, in most cases, maybe all, though some might work on boards that support USB boots.

 

Winhex

as Abraxas posts there likely will be a problem with any dos hdd editor program unless you can connect drive to the mobod. You can buy Winhex or try DISK PROBE form MS list in my previos post.

The first time when you use the access box to open partition , there will be very little to see for data , the 2nd to 5th line should have data. when you go to the access box again hopefuly it will have a different drop down box with DIRICTORy listed click on it, does it show a valid directory? IF so at very top right corner there will be 2 X's close the lower one.

You will now be back to the begaining. Use the access box again but this time select "Partiton Table Template" vise open. What is the data listed for "Hidden Sectors" and "Sectors (on large volum)" along with the offset to there left ?

hope you understand my poor directions.

 

I cannot change it to an internal drive because it is a usb drive and only has a usb connection on it. Good idea though.

Topfarmer...here is what I am seeing with winhex:

From Tools, I select OPEN DISK. Under the PHYSICAL MEDIA section, it lists Hard disk 2 with 149 GB. I select this drive and the screen opens up to show alot of hex stuff with the alpha numeric equivalent to the right of it. Most of it is unreadable stuff but what I can read says: "Invalid partition table. Error loading operating system. Missing operating system ".

Next I click on the little Access box on the upper right and select "partition 1 (149GB?)" from the dropdown menu.

Then I select "partition table template" and it opens up a new window on top of the hex table. THis new window is labeled "Master Boot Record, Base Offset:0"

This window has 3 columns labeled:
Offset Title Value
0 Master bootstrap loader 33 C0 8E D0 BC 00 7C FB 50 07 50 1F FC BE 1B

Below that are 3 subheadings labeled Partition table entry #1, Partition table entry#2, #3, and #4. The only one that has anything in the table besides zeros is table #1. Here is what table 1 looks like:

1BE 80=active partition 00
1BF start head 1
1C0 start sector 1
1C0 start cylinder 0
1C2 partition type indicator (hex) 07
1C3 end head 254
1C4 end sector 63
1C4 end cylinder 1023
1C6 sectors preceedin partition 1 63
1CA sectors in partion 1 312560577

as I said, all the other 4 tables have zeros for all the entries. Then at the very bottom of the window:
1FE Signature (55AA) 55AA

That's as far as I get. I dont know if this info is useful but it sure has taken me a long time to type. It would be alot easier to do a screen capture to post here if that were possible. How do I proceed next? Thanks again.

 

In looking at my previous post, I see that for some reason all my spaces were removed from my table. I made the table to look just like it did on my pc but all spaces were removed so the table is all scrunched to the left. I hope you can still interpret it.

 

I just discovered something. I have a mini 256MB usb flash drive that I use easily transfer spreadsheets or data from one pc to another. It was also plugged in to my pc when I did the upgrade from 2000 to XP. I just now tried to access it and the same thing happens. It shows up under "My computer" as removable storage disk F: but I cannot access it. Tells me to "insert disk into drive F:" When I check properties, it again says "raw" just like my 160GB external drive. Windows will not let me format it either. Maybe it wasnt me after all, but the install that ******* things up for me. So now it appears Ive got 2 drives that windows doesnt know what to do with.

 

the data from the partition table , shows you have 1 primary partiton, partition type is NTFS/HPFS (07) .
If the partition should be fat 32 than partiton type indicater has to be (0C), everything else looks good. With the partiton type wrong it can not be read.

Now the next problem is to change it and writing it back to the hdd. The programs I have used likely will not work on an external drive, they might if the hdd is seen in the bios setup. I thnk you can pull the hdd from the USB enclosure and you have an IDE drive.

You can buy Winhex , US $ 51 and EU 37.
Till you decied to buy Winhex or pull hdd from enclosure (or try something else ?), will have to wait to help in writting data back to hdd.

I have not knowlege on a flash drive, but you can try PC Inspector Smart Recovery as posted by Abraxas.

 

I think winhex must be mistaken. This drive came already formatted as FAT 32 right out of the box. I did not change this. I would gladly pay 51 to get all my stuff back but am not really sure if this pgm can help me. What do you think. Does it sound pretty easily done to you?

 

It is not knowen just what XP all did to the drive. It did change the partition type from Fat32 to NTFS (winhex is only displaying what it sees) and it might have formated or wrote data other places on the drive, we have to hope not. We need to try to determan.

1)From the Access box go to BOOT SECTOR ( if listed boot sector template) is there any data starting at offset 7E0B to offset 7E52 ?

2)Next at top menu go "Position/Go to sector" in new box type in 95 press ok.
You should now be in the FAT table . at offset BE00 is the first line
"F8 ff ff f0 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 0f 04 00 00 00 " with the next lines every 4th or 5th ( not sure do to hdd size differences) the numbers increase by one, with "FF FF FF 0F" (end of file) every once is a while ?

3)Top menu select "Search\find text" in new box type in a file or directory name that should be in the root directory, press ok. On right side of new display do you see other names that should be in root dir. ?

Depending on answers to #1 ,2,3 will determain how hard this operation will be and if possible.

 

Sorry to be so basic but all of this stuff feels like a foreign language to me. Clicking on Access and then Boot sector ( there is no boot sector template option). Under the offset column there is no 7E0B. The only 7's listed are 7E0
7E10
7E20 down to 7EF0. None of these offsets have anything but 00's.

...Ok I just figured out how to read the table. The last digit of the offset is along the top. But still there is nothing but 00's in any of those offsets.

BE00 f0
BE01 ff
be02 ff
be03 0f
be04 ff
be05 ff
be06 ff
be07 ff
be08 ff
be09 ff
be0a ff
BE0B 0F...after that...everything in that window is 00

And yes, in answer to question 3, I was able to do a text search and find the names of the folders in the root directory.

 

One can get lost in all this .
Some more info to get lost on. On a Fat32 drive ,there is a backup boot record ( 3 sectors each) starting 6 sectors after the first one. The first boot record on a primary partition normaly starts at sector 63 (offset 7E00) with 2nd at sector 69 (offset 8A00). { I did forget about it}

I ran a test on a 4g Fat32 hdd with winXP installed, non active pri. partiton.
1)Booted into repare console and ran diskpart and deleated the partiton and than made a new one NTFS (07). I think what happend to yours, automatical.
2)Shut down and booted in Win98 (drive could now not be seen NTFS) .
3)Ran Winhex and verified partiton type NTFS and looked at the Boot Sector as with yours all 0's.
4)ran "DE ", a dos hdd editor, and changed partiton type to (0C) Fat32 from (07) NTFS, restated comp.
5) booted back to WIN98 and this time the hdd was given 2 different drive letters, Dont know why.
6)ran "DE" again and copyed the copy (sector 69) of boot record to the master (sector 63).
7)rebooted , but this time selected and successfuly ran XP installed on 4g hdd, so no damage to data on hdd.

Don't get discouraged yet , as long as hdd was not formated as my test showed the drive is still intact with all data.

General infor. to read the offset numbers , down the left side goes by 10 HEX and across the top goes from 0 -F Hex .So offset 7E0B is on left side 7E00 and accros the top to B (12 over).

Need to have you go back to Access/boot sector and from there use the Page Down key (6 time's) , you should see offset 8A00 (copy of boot sector), does it have data ?

If yes and you can verify my last post #2 and #3 then your next step is to buy Winhex , so you can edit the hdd and get to your data . With the editing steps, you MUST understand my directions before doing anything.

 

For some reason I did not see the last half of your post, guess I'm blind.

Not to sure on what to think about your response to question #2. Go back to #2 position and use page down key 12 to 24 or more times and see if you find data, you may have just deleted the file that was there and it has not yet been filed with a new one, but I do not like what you said is at B000 is should be F8 not F0 as far as I know.