Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (
More info?)
Josh said in news:1b1c601c44ff0$2b00baf0$a601280a@phx.gbl:
> I was installing XP on my computer again and some stupid
> reason i deleted both partions on each HDD. Now i have
> lost over 2 years work in tax returns. Is there anyway
> for me to recover this lost info. I delted it in the xp
> setup. Please help ill busy for a long long time if i
> have to start over.
>
> Thanks
I can't remember which, but maybe it was MBRtool or MBRwork had an
option to scan the drive to guess at the start of partitions and
recreate the partition table in the MBR. If you know exactly the size
of the partitions, you could try recreating them at the same size again.
You would be making the partition table match up with the partitions
that are still there (but just no longer defined in the partition
table). However, I would not recommend trying to boot to them after
defining the "new" partitions (to hopefully match the old partitions).
Instead boot using bootable floppy. If they were FAT partitions, you
could tell if you can see files on the recreated partitions. If they
used NTFS, you'll need a bootable floppy with an NTFS driver (NTFSINFO,
for example).
Recreating the partitions this way (by redefining them to be the exact
same size and starting on the same cylinder as before) doesn't restore
the boot sector of each partition which, I believe, does get wiped when
the partition is deleted. So you might not be able to boot those
partitions, and if you didn't define them exactly as before then booting
could cause file corruption.
A Google search on "recover lost partition" will show several utilities
available, like
http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/ArticleID/39103/39103.html which
mentions Ontrack's EasyRecovery (http://www.ontrack.com/software/).
While they may scan and guess at the start of partitions, and guess at
their type (NFTS, FAT32, whatever), I don't how good they are at
rebuilding the boot sector of a partition. But since you are after the
data, you don't need a boot sector. Make your partition-deleted drive
your slave drive, install a new master drive, install the same version
of Windows on the new master drive, use the method or tools to try to
recover the deleted partitions, and read only those files from the
recovered partitions. The cost of another hard drive sounds minimal
compared to the value of your data.
--
____________________________________________________________
*** Post replies to newsgroup. Share with others.
*** Email domain = ".com" *AND* append "=NEWS=" to Subject.
____________________________________________________________
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram