Partition/data recovery help needed - inaccessible after saving DeployCenter/DriveImage image files

[Emily]

I have an 80GB Maxtor drive with 3 partitions:

- C: 20GB primary FAT partition running Win98
- D: 20GB extended FAT partition (not bootable, used only for file
storage)
- G: 35GB primary NTFS partition running W2K

I installed PowerQuest DeployCenter V5.01 to the W2K drive (G,
created a backup image of (G and stored the image files to the (D
drive. All went OK until I tried to access the (D drive from
Windows Explorer in either Win98 or Win2K (still visible in the
navigation), but get a "D:\ is not accessible. The parameter is
incorrect" error and a check in Computer Management says this drive
has 100% free space.

So ... looking for recommendations on how to restore my hard drive,
regain access to my D: partition & files and wondering how saving the
image files to this directory would have been able to cause this
problem.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!
Emily

 

[dan]

All you did was save to a directory on the D drive? Or did your
imaging program ask for a DRIVE (rather than a directory) to save on,
and/or possibly write to the partition table. Anyway, I'd guess that
the partition table is screwed up. I believe I have recovered from a
screwed up partition table before, but it was pretty difficult and
took a long time. Since I'm at work tonight, I can't give you any
specifics, just that you can search for free utilities on the net to
help you (you can PROBABLY find them easier and have more luck with
them if you're willing to pay, but I wasn't so I don't know.) I
believe there was one utility I used to search for possible partitions
and one that allowed me to manually edit the partition table. I may
still have the programs at home and/or be able to give you names
later. Once I found the correct parameters, I wrote them down in case
I ever need them again.

If possible, I'd back up your other data first though in case you
loose it. You probably won't since you know you don't need to change
the parameters for C: and G:, but better safe than sorry. I know it's
often hard to back up everything onto disk now that hard drives are so
huge - particularly if you can't write to media AT LEAST as big as a
CD (preferably at least a DVD), so I wouldn't really worry if u can't
back it up unless you have something really important on there.