Lost a logical drive, recovery?

[Bob T]

I'm using a Maxtor 80gig HD in my system, broken into a
primary partition (C drive) and an exteneded partion with
logical drives, d-g, all formated in FAT32.

I just lost my "f" logical drive.

I try to open it through My Computer or Explorer and get
the message: drive is unformated. Format now?

Win2K properties show it as all blue, which would be all
used. It lists it as:

File system: Unknown
Used Space 0 bytes, 0 bytes available
Free Space 0 bytes, 0 bytes available
Capacity 0 bytes, 0 bytes available.

Partition Magic shows:

File System: FAT 32
Size: 12 MB (capacity I have set)
Used MB: 12 MB (all used up????)
Ununsed MB: 0

Any ideas on how to recover?

My backup/ghost image is only for my systems drive, C.
I didn't think a logical would go :>(

Bob

 

[Bob T]

-----Original Message-----


It looks like the partition type-marker is wrong, or one that W2K can't
understand (W2K seems rather stupid about partition types and file systems,
actually - it reports OS/2 HPFS partitions as NTFS, but of course cannot read
them.) Also, the directory structure on F: seems corrupted. The fact that PM
can recognise the capacity and file system of F, but apparently misreports
its usage, indicates that the partition table may also be corrupted. In any
case, a number of crucial bytes stored in various places on the HD are not
what they should be. Restoring/correcting them should bring back the
partition.

Perhaps Dfsee, utility with which you can re/write individual bytes on the
HD, may be of use. But its power makes it dangerous - you do have to know
exactly what each byte in the directory, partition table, etc means. A google
should find a source. But you also need tutoring in file structures,
partition type bytes, etc. I knew a bunch of that stuff once, but I forgot it
within a week or two of using it. Sorry. :-(

Or you need savvy technician.

Thanks Wolf,

Since writing, I have discoverd that DOS see all the
partions just fine. All directories/files are intact,
also, expensive hardware/recovery programs can pull off
the data.

I do have a copy of my systems (C) drive. Would restoring
it, bring back the Windows version of the partition table?

Does Norton make anything that would help?

I thought of XCOPYing everything, but I don't have a third
drive large enough to hold all the info that the XCOPY
would be trasferring.

1)So the questions now are, if DOS can see it, can I get
Win2k to see it and how?

2) Will using my backup of the C drive brimg back the Win
version of the partion table (if it's different from DOS)?

3) Does Norton make anything that might help?

Any more idea? Anyone?