recovering a HDD partition (editing the partition table?)

[Guest]

I have a HDD that has crashed. It was running Windows XP Pro and only had 1
partition. The BIOS recognizes the drive and its geometry, the
manufacturer's diagnostic tools report that the HDD has no errors. But the
BIOS reports that no partitions are on the drive. I have done nothing to
alter the HDD at this point. A friend of mine had a similar problem a couple
of years ago and he solved it by editing the partition table because he
remembered the exact way he partitioned the drive (but he doesn't remember
what he used or how he did it - it's been a while). He had no data loss. I
am thinking that doing the same would work in this situation since the HDD
only has 1 partition and I have several other systems that I've configured
the exact same way. Does anyone know how I can get the partition recogized
by either editing the partition table or some other means.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

You might try mbrwork from www.terabyteunlimited.com, it's free and can help
with these sorts of problems.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have a HDD that has crashed. It was running Windows XP Pro and only had 1
partition. The BIOS recognizes the drive and its geometry, the
manufacturer's diagnostic tools report that the HDD has no errors. But the
BIOS reports that no partitions are on the drive.

Get MBRWork from the Free downloads at www.bootitng.com

Put it on a basic DOS floppy (eg made in XP My Computer, right click
floppy drive, Format and check MSDOS Startup.

Boot that and run
MBRWORK
Give
1 (to backup so you could get back where you are with 2)
3 and 4 to clear the first track
then you can use
A
to search the disk for 'signatures' of partitions and make a new Table
5
to write new MBR code and possibly
6
to choose the partition to be Active