recovering corrupt hard disk, only 1 partition

[Anne Onime]

I had a disk with 3 partitions. It seems the first few tracks
of the disk were wiped, which contain the most important
information. Now it happens that it was cloned from a disk
of same size and model years ago. I also tried "testdisk"
which found the second partition, giving me the start and
end CHS locations. This is the same CHS as the source disk from
which it was cloned. I used a partition editor to setup
the partition tables the same as on the source disk.
Actually I used two editors, Ranish and Powerquest to get
all the values. Now I know the FAT (and backup FAT) of the
first partition are lost, but hoped remaking the partition
table might achieve something, like restore the second and
third partitions. First 2 partions were FAT32
and the third NTFS.
When I plug the doctored disk in, and boot from a working
disk, WinXP only sees the second partition. I thought
that I should see the third as well. I don't believe
any other tracks were wiped out in the second or third
partitions. So what else could be wrong?

 

[Paul]

I had a disk with 3 partitions. It seems the first few tracks
of the disk were wiped, which contain the most important
information. Now it happens that it was cloned from a disk
of same size and model years ago. I also tried "testdisk"
which found the second partition, giving me the start and
end CHS locations. This is the same CHS as the source disk from
which it was cloned. I used a partition editor to setup
the partition tables the same as on the source disk.
Actually I used two editors, Ranish and Powerquest to get
all the values. Now I know the FAT (and backup FAT) of the
first partition are lost, but hoped remaking the partition
table might achieve something, like restore the second and
third partitions. First 2 partions were FAT32
and the third NTFS.
When I plug the doctored disk in, and boot from a working
disk, WinXP only sees the second partition. I thought
that I should see the third as well. I don't believe
any other tracks were wiped out in the second or third
partitions. So what else could be wrong?

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

"Highlight this partition and press p to list your files"

Are you able to do that, when you find that partition with
Testdisk ? Can you get it to successfully list files ?
If so, double check the partition entry is correct.

Another possibility, might be a permissions problem. But with
a whole partition, I haven't a clue how that might work. I'm
only mentioning that, as an alternative to contemplating
the partition is actually damaged.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421

Another thing. Take a careful, careful, look at your
partition entries. Make sure the tail of the first
working partition, isn't "hanging over" the head of
the next sequential partition. If it was, you could
end up writing crap into it. A single mistake at the
partition table level, could be deadly.

Just for fun, you could post the numbers you're using
in your partition table (MBR) entries.

Paul