Partition table corrupted

  • Thread starter Thread starter Stephane Mabille
  • Start date Start date
S

Stephane Mabille

I upgraded my server motherboard, reinstalled Windows 2000
server to get the proper drivers installed, etc..
Everything worked fine except that my drive letters where
not correct.... and then I was (sooooo) stupid:
I reassigned them using the disk manager without
installing any SP first and of course on a large drive!
So my partition table is corrupted and my disk is
unbootable.
How can I fix that (hopefully nothing should have been
deleted beside the partition table) and I have a spare XP
SP1 system if needed to connect the drive.
As you might guess I would like to recover the data
present on the drive as I don't have backup and as it's a
small network the W2K was the only controller in the
domain... so the forest root would need to be recovered
too!

Thanks.
 
Stephane said:
I upgraded my server motherboard, reinstalled Windows 2000
server to get the proper drivers installed, etc..
Everything worked fine except that my drive letters where
not correct.... and then I was (sooooo) stupid:
I reassigned them using the disk manager without
installing any SP first and of course on a large drive!
So my partition table is corrupted and my disk is
unbootable.
How can I fix that (hopefully nothing should have been
deleted beside the partition table) and I have a spare XP
SP1 system if needed to connect the drive.
As you might guess I would like to recover the data
present on the drive as I don't have backup and as it's a
small network the W2K was the only controller in the
domain... so the forest root would need to be recovered
too!

Thanks.
Click to expand...
FWIW, and I realize this was quite a different context, but the only way
I found to recover a laptop drive whose partition table got messed up
was to boot a Linux startup disk. Then, it is possible to use the linux
Fdisk command to sort things out. Of course, any backup you would be
able to do before attempting this might come in handy!!! But this saved
my day. If you come up with a utility that help you solve the problem
differently, I for one would love knowing about it.

Good luck
 
Hi John,

I have downloaded a bunch of utilities that are supposed
to scan the drive and fix the table, Partition Table
Doctor seems to have lots of positive feedbacks.

I'll test the lot tonight and keep you informed. As I
found several utilities that should do the job I was
looking for the best one before giving a try, just to
avoid ruining my only chance by running the wrong one!

I'll keep you informed.

Stephane
 
Back
Top