restore partition

[anon]

sorry for the long message - but you need to know all the details

i run winxp pro - two hard disks each partitioned.

i was fiddling around with creating an unnattended install disk,
intending it to re-install a fresh copy over my existing C: drive

however, without me catching it quick enough, for some reason, it
started installing it on my H: drive (first available partition on the
second hard drive) which contains very valuable data (and no... silly
me.. no backups)

i cancelled the install after about only 20 seconds, however, it has
&*%^&$ up the partition table & MBR (i think) as now the drive is
inaccessible. i tried command line chkdsk and all it says is that the
H: partition has free space marked as allocated, and tries to correct
it, but then gives error msg of insufficient disk space to fix it.

i have run partition magic pro to examine the partition - it is visible,
but inaccessible thru PM Pro - only option is to delete it entirely -
and it shows that the partition is full (as chkdsk also noted) however,
i know for a fact that it ISNT full - just been mis-allocated as full

in desperation i ran nortons windoctor - HOORAY - this managed to
somehow fix some of the file pointers, so i was then able to access the
drive as normal from within explorer. I tried to move all the files off
that partition to another one on the first physical hard disk, but a lot
of them give error msg of I/O device error - not accessible

GRRRR..... ive tried the recovery console - fixmbr and this said that
all partitions (3 of them) on the affected disk had been successfully
rewritten, however rebooting into explorer results in the entire disk
being inaccessible again..... back to norton windoctor to at least make
the files visible again

can somebody PLEASE help me reclaim these files. I am prepared to lose
a few files, but there are WAY too many of them affected here for me to
lose them all

Thanx in advance & Merry Christmas to All
spinifex

 

[Ron Rector]

Are you receiving an "Access Denied" message? If so you
will have to take ownership of the drive. To learn more
about taking ownership open help and support and type in
Take Ownership.

 

[anon]

at first, i received access denied error, then after norton windoctor,
majority of files became accessible - i moved these off the affected hard
disk to another partition on a separate hard disk

however, some files have been corrupted as they are not accessible - returns
an I/O device error message

can i somehow "reprogram" whatever has corrupted on these files, and restore
them, so i can move them off the drive and do a complete re-format of the
affected physical disk??

NOTE: chkdsk has now decided that some sectors of the disk are bad, and
isolated them. How do i de-isolate these sectors, to restore my files?

 

[anon]

PS. i read the instructions in the help file for creating unnattended
installs thru setup manager, and set the repartition item to NO, and yet,
for some reason, it did not query me for the correct partition to set up on.
not only did it decide to install windows on the wrong partition, it also
chose the wrong physical hard disk

hard disks were correctly jumpered as master/slave, so no problem there

 

[El More]

Hello,

You can restore your lost partition using Active@ Partition Recover
tool. IT works great and really helped me some times before. Give it
try, you won't regret it.
http://www.partition-recovery.com

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

You should include the original post in your response so that everyone will
know what you're talking about. Especially so when replying to older or
future dated posts, as most of us filter these out.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org