Re: [TCLUG:18079] clobbered partition table

["Jeff Keacher" <teuobk@ringworld.org>]

A program that can fix just about any hard drive problem (including
restoring/rebuilding from scratch partition and FAT tables) is Hard Drive
Mechanic.  I've tried it with great success.  Just boot off the included
floppy and go through the pseudo-GUI to fix the problem(s) of choice.  It'll
run you about $45 at Best Buy.

Cheers,
Jeff

----- Original Message -----
From: Tim Neu <tim@tneu.visi.com>
To: <tclug-list@mn-linux.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 8:17 PM
Subject: Re: [TCLUG:18079] clobbered partition table


> On Tue, 23 May 2000, David S. Cargo wrote:
>
> > During the installfest, I managed to use Partition Magic 2.02 to clobber
> > my partition table on my combined Windows 95 / Linux disk.
> >
> > Looking at possible solutions, I checked with Ontrack; they are sure
> > they could fix the problem, but it would cost.  (It might be worth it,
> > but I'm looking at alternatives.)  I also called the Geek Squad, and
they
> > said they could recover data, but not necessarily Windows itself.
> >
> > Linux has two programs that might allow a person to try to do this
> > himself:  gpart and fixdisktable.
> >
> > My question is, have you ever had this problem?  Did you try to cover
> > it yourself?  What were the results?
>
> If you have a printout of fdisk -l from prior to the "accident", you
> can possibly recover by recreating the exact partition structure.  Unless
> you've already overwritten the partition with new data, your files would
> all still be there.
>
> The problem is, if you installed OVER the existing partition, your data is
> likely to be erased by the filesystem creation (as part of the
> installation procedure).  There's no easy way to recover, if the data has
> already been overwritten
>
> The only practical scenario where this would save you would be if you
> deleted /dev/hda1, installing linux on /dev/hda2 (leaving the former hda1
> as free space).  You could then recreate the partion entry for /dev/hda1
> and your files would be intact.
>
> Backups are your friend!
>
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