Undoing the "undo" again using Norton Disk Doctor (How to get back a lost partition)

[Certified]

I wanted a job to be undone on a IBM drive, but I forgot that some hours
before I replaced that drive with another one (WD)! So I did it launching
NDD from dos and reading the "undo" file from a floppy. The job, concerning
partion errors, was done on the wrong disk. So for the moment I have 2
ureadable drives!
Any idea? A good and free partition recovery software? Norton itself?
There should be a backup of the partition table in the MBR, haw can I read
it and back it up?
thank you!
Walter

(e-mail address removed)

 

[Joep]

I wanted a job to be undone on a IBM drive, but I forgot that some hours
before I replaced that drive with another one (WD)! So I did it launching
NDD from dos and reading the "undo" file from a floppy. The job, concerning
partion errors, was done on the wrong disk. So for the moment I have 2
ureadable drives!

It really depends upon what was in the undo files. If the undo files only
'contained' partition TABLE info then it likely that you can recover from
this mistake. If the undo also modified partitions themselves (like their
boot sectors) then it will be more complicated: After all when you'd scan
for 'lost' partitions, those partitions will be detected with the 'repaired'
boot sectors.

You can run our DiskPatch demo and determine if it detects the original
partitions. If so, then any partition table recovery software should be able
to recover the partitions.

If it detects the 'repaired' partition however it really depends a bit on
how good you can remember the original partition layout. If we're dealing
with one partition that we know the location and size of, the boot sector
can probably be repaired. Once a valid boot sector is in place again, the
partition can be recovered. Since you mention '*a* lost partition' I think
this will be possible.

Any idea? A good and free partition recovery software? Norton itself?

Norton DiskDoctor does have a 'rebuild' switch (NDD /REBUILD), this
sometimes works, however when I 'played' with that a while ago, it screw up
more often than it did any good.

There should be a backup of the partition table in the MBR, haw can I read
it and back it up?

Where would this backup be? Normally there's no backup unless you have
backed it up yourself.


Kind regards,
Joep

--
D I Y D a t a R e c o v e r y . N L - Data & Disaster Recovery Tools

http://www.diydatarecovery.nl
http://www.diydatarecovery.com

Please include previous correspondence!

DiskPatch - MBR, Partition, boot sector repair and recovery.
iRecover - FAT, FAT32 and NTFS data recovery.
MBRtool - Freeware MBR backup and restore.

 

[Zvi Netiv]

I wanted a job to be undone on a IBM drive, but I forgot that some hours
before I replaced that drive with another one (WD)! So I did it launching
NDD from dos and reading the "undo" file from a floppy. The job, concerning
partion errors, was done on the wrong disk. So for the moment I have 2
ureadable drives!

The last time I had anything successfully done with NDD was many years ago, on
disks running under DOS 3.30. Since then, the only use I found for NDD is to
demonstrate how to mess a drive, in training on data recovery.

Any idea? A good and free partition recovery software? Norton itself?
There should be a backup of the partition table in the MBR, haw can I read
it and back it up?

Most of the features offered in RESQDISK are free. Yet what you need most is
some understanding in disk structures.

NDD's 'undo' may extend from easy-to-restore damage like messing with the MBR
and boot sector, to tricky stuff like overwriting directories' content and do
changes to FAT. Depending on how extensive these changes were, the damage may
extend from light, to KYDG (kiss your data goodbye).

How to proceed: You may use a tool like RESQDISK /ASSESS to assess the extent
of the problem. Upon which, you may need to rebuild the partition table and/or
the boot sector.

We'll see then what next, depending on the outcome of the first stage.

Regards, Zvi

 

[Certified]

I foud two kind persons! Thank you very much for your suggestions.
This evening I'll try to recover my stuff and then I hope to tell you some
good news.

Bye
Walter

 

[Certified]

I did it! The situation wasn' t so bad and the 2 partitions on my hd
reappeared soon (thanks to Christophe Grenier's "TestDisk").

Just the first of the 2 partitions, which was an NTFS bootable with WIN.XP
on it, lost something: even so is reported (PQMAGIC) as primary bootable
and active, it does not start anymore. So, as I have its partial backup on
a GHOST image, i decided to convert it to FAT32 just to read some new data
I saved on it last days.

A good thing for me could be to learn how to recover/replace the
partition's startup information to have WindowsXP starting again without
changing anything, neither the FAT32 filesystem.

Greetings!
Walter