Reconstruct partition table.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sergio
  • Start date Start date
S

Sergio

Hi all.
First of all, please excuse me is this is a offtopic in this NW. I've tried
to choose the proper NW to ask this and not crosspot. Excuse me also for my
bad English.

My problem is that i have overwritten the partition table of my HD.
It was a 120 GB HD with several partitions:

1-NTFS with Win Xp
2-NTFS with data
3-boot Linux
4-swap Linux
5-native Linux.

I don't remember either the exact size of each partition or the exact
begginig point of each partition in the HD.

Trying to install MSDOS, my partition table has been ruined. Now, running
appls such as fdisk, I see the HD like an unformatted 2 GB partition and lot
of unpartitioned free space.
The data should be still there, because I have'nt formated or delete
anything on the disk. So, the real problem is that due to the new partition
table I just can't view the data.

I've searched on the net and old messages in the newsgroups. It seems that
there are quite a few applications to recover a partition table from a
backup file wich contains the data of how the old partition table was.
Problem is that I did not make a backup file.

Perhaps is out there any kind or application wich scans the HD, and in
function of the data it finds, it can guess where a partition is beggining
and where is ending, so it can reconstruct me the partition table.
Do you know about any other program to fix it??
I don't care about the Ext-2 partitions, but I need to recover the NTFS
partitions.

Remember: I've not formatted the HD, but I have no info about the exact
point where the partiotions begun, and I don't remember their exact size.

Thanks a lot. Hope anyone know about some program to fix it.
Regards.
 
Hello

Sergio ( said:
[...]
Perhaps is out there any kind or application wich scans the HD, and in
function of the data it finds, it can guess where a partition is
beggining and where is ending, so it can reconstruct me the partition
table. Do you know about any other program to fix it??
I don't care about the Ext-2 partitions, but I need to recover the
NTFS partitions.
Click to expand...

I had a similar problem reinstalling Windows 98, and I could recover the
partition table using Knoppix (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix) and the
testdisk program that was included. It can scan your disk and guess the
partition table.

best regards
Andreas Janssen
 
on 06/03/04 said:
Perhaps is out there any kind or application wich scans the HD, and in
function of the data it finds, it can guess where a partition is
beggining and where is ending, so it can reconstruct me the partition
table. Do you know about any other program to fix it??
Click to expand...

You can try DFSEE:

http://www.dfsee.com

It has an option for finding (lost) partitions.

You can download the bootable image diskette, create the diskette,
boot from it and access this option under the "Actions" menu.

HTH
Nelson

-----------------------------------------------------------
Nelson M. G. Santiago <[email protected]>
-----------------------------------------------------------

Today is Thu Jun 03, 2004.

As of 4:11pm this OS/2 Warp 4 system has been up for 0 days, 1 hours, and
16 minutes. It's running 30 processes with 127 threads.
 
Sergio said:
Hi all.
First of all, please excuse me is this is a offtopic in this NW. I've tried
to choose the proper NW to ask this and not crosspot. Excuse me also for my
bad English.

My problem is that i have overwritten the partition table of my HD.
It was a 120 GB HD with several partitions:

1-NTFS with Win Xp
2-NTFS with data
3-boot Linux
4-swap Linux
5-native Linux.

I don't remember either the exact size of each partition or the exact
begginig point of each partition in the HD.

Trying to install MSDOS, my partition table has been ruined. Now, running
appls such as fdisk, I see the HD like an unformatted 2 GB partition and lot
of unpartitioned free space.
The data should be still there, because I have'nt formated or delete
anything on the disk. So, the real problem is that due to the new partition
table I just can't view the data.

I've searched on the net and old messages in the newsgroups. It seems that
there are quite a few applications to recover a partition table from a
backup file wich contains the data of how the old partition table was.
Problem is that I did not make a backup file.

Perhaps is out there any kind or application wich scans the HD, and in
function of the data it finds, it can guess where a partition is beggining
and where is ending, so it can reconstruct me the partition table.
Do you know about any other program to fix it??
I don't care about the Ext-2 partitions, but I need to recover the NTFS
partitions.

Remember: I've not formatted the HD, but I have no info about the exact
point where the partiotions begun, and I don't remember their exact size.

Thanks a lot. Hope anyone know about some program to fix it.
Regards.
Click to expand...

There is a tool called gpart
<http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/user/76201/gpart/> which has
rescued a couple of similar cases for me.

HTH

Tauno Voipio
tauno voipio @ iki fi
 
Hi all.
Thanks a lot for your replies.

I downloaded TestDisk (www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.html) as Andreas adviced
me.
I executed it and it found by 5 partitions. It seems it scans the HD looking
for the heading of quite a lot filesystems.
I have recovered all the data and I can boot from that HD in both the Win XP
and the Linux partition, so everything it's OK again.

Thanks for your replies.
Regards
 
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