recover FAT32 partitions which are only readable from the Win98 dos prompt

[Guest]

I have a harddisk with 2 partitions which are only
accessible from the Win98 Setup-CD prompt. Windows 2000
says the partitions are not formatted. Dskprobe.exe is
useless too, since sector 0 is idential to sector 6 on
both drives. They used to be 30 GB FAT32 partitions.

The harddisk may have suffered a headcrash. Windows 2000
was installed on one of the partitions but unable to boot
after the possible headcrash.

When trying to install Windows 2000 on a blank harddisk,
the installer started to format the partitions I want to
recover (no, I made no mistake. this is a bug in the Win2k
installer - it installs to the first partition of the
master drive instead of installing to the selected
partition of the slave drive or giving a warning that it
must be installed on the master drive).

Any help is welcome. If the problem can't be fixed,
perhaps there's some tool that can read files
from "unformatted" disks or guess the long names of the
files I want to recover?

 

[DL]

If the hd is suspect, surely yr going to install a new hd?
Disconnect old hd, install new hd as master then install Win2k. Connect old
hd as slave to recover files. The hd manu.may have a disk checker utility on
their site.

 

[Brona]

Greetings,

You can really try Active@ partition recovery utility to restore lost
partition. It literally saved me ever before, so I consider it really
great tool. Give it a try, you won't regret it !
http://www.partition-recovery.com/

 

[Guest]

Hello,
I suppose using Data Recovery tool - Partition Table Doctor or EASEUS
DataRecoveryWizard.
It is imho the best one among it's family. Easy to use and powerful.
It actually never failed me before. Recommended!

http://www.ptdd.com
http://www.easeus.com/