hard drive partition

  • Thread starter Thread starter stephen
  • Start date Start date
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stephen

hi,

i have a hard drive and i accidently deleted the partition
on it, but i didn't reformat it, so the data is still on
the drive. is there any way to apply a partition to the
existing data so that i can read the data through windows
again?
thanks.
 
stephen said:
hi,

i have a hard drive and i accidently deleted the partition
on it, but i didn't reformat it, so the data is still on
the drive. is there any way to apply a partition to the
existing data so that i can read the data through windows
again?
thanks.
Click to expand...

If it was FAT32 or NTFS (not FAT16), *and* you remember
the exact size of the partition, then yes. See:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q245/7/25.ASP

and related links.

Rick
 
If it was FAT32 or NTFS (not FAT16), *and* you remember
the exact size of the partition, then yes. See:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q245/7/25.ASP

and related links.

Rick
Click to expand...

Or, if you have an FDisk that can handle a large HD, just run it, and
recreate the partition. This will work if you have deleted only one
partition, and all disk space was used, for then the former partition will
show as free space. Just recreate it in the free space. Recreating a
partition does _not_ reformat it -- it just resets the information in the
partition table. (I found this out by accident, when I was reinstalling two
different OSs on a drive, and made the new partitions the same size as they
were with the old installations - I just got the old installations back. So
the machine booted from the old installation, which was the one I wanted to
destroy.)

If you deleted two or more partitions, use Rick's suggestion, or get DFSee,
with which you can rewrite the partition table (and a good deal of other
stuff) directly. DFSee has a steep learning curve, as you really, really have
to understand disk data structure to use it safely. It's a very powerful, and
therefore dangerous utility, IOW.

HTH&GL


--
Best Wishes,
Wolf Kirchmeir, Blind River ON
"Not that brains are everything --
you'll also need a skull to put them in." (Nancy Franklin, 1997)
<just one w and plain ca for correct address>
 
All you have to do is recreate the partition in the MBR with a disk editor
like Ranish partition manager. Works for any volume.

DO NOT LISTEN TO WOLFIE! He is a complete idiot, and his "use fdisk" advice
will certainly destroy the FAT or MTF.

| > hi,
| >
| > i have a hard drive and i accidently deleted the partition
| > on it, but i didn't reformat it, so the data is still on
| > the drive. is there any way to apply a partition to the
| > existing data so that i can read the data through windows
| > again?
| > thanks.
|
| If it was FAT32 or NTFS (not FAT16), *and* you remember
| the exact size of the partition, then yes. See:
|
| http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q245/7/25.ASP
|
| and related links.
|
| Rick
|
|
 
DO NOT LISTEN TO WOLFIE! He is a complete idiot, and his "use fdisk" advice
will certainly destroy the FAT or MTF.
Click to expand...

Problem is, it doesn't always work that way. In fact, as far as I can figure
out, it does that only when you create a different size partition, leastways
with the version of FDisk I used. As I said, I found this out by trying to
use FDisk to do what you claim it "certainly" does - "destroy the FAT/etc."
Didn't work. I booted to OS/2, used its FDisk to "delete" the partition,
powered down, rebooted, used FDisk to create a partition using all of what
was now "free space" -- and got the original partition back, complete with
all files. I was some surprised, my friend, since I believed exactly what you
claim. (footnote)

How do you explain that behaviour of FDisk, Eric?

Or could it be that different FDisks work somewhat differently?
H'mmm............

footnote:
It was an NTFS partition, actually. I wanted to do a fresh install of W2K,
you see, and thought by "destroying" the partition with Fdisk, I could get a
clean partition to do that. So I reformatted FAT16, then had W2K reformat
NTFS during install.

Cheers!


--
Best Wishes,
Wolf Kirchmeir, Blind River ON
"Not that brains are everything --
you'll also need a skull to put them in." (Nancy Franklin, 1997)
<just one w and plain ca for correct address>
 
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