Well that knackered it!

[GT]

The HD4830 just wouldn't play - tried everything I knew of with drivers, but
games are just unplayable due to wierd texture lines and artifacts. I
finally caved in and reformatted my primary (Samsung 1TB) hard disk. This
drive was previously partitioned into 50GB C: (Fat32 system) and 950GB D: -
NTFS data. Stuck in the Windows XP install CD and booted from it, but it
couldn't find any partitions on the drive! My only option was to create a
new partition, so I just agreed with it and created a slightly smaller than
50GB partition. Of course, now that it has messed about with partitions, XP
can't find the second partition on the drive.

Anyone know a reliable or good way of recoving my second partition?

Before you all shout backups at me - yes I have backups of all my important
data, but I had loads of GBs of games on the drive and I would rather
recover them than have to re-install them and re-play them from scratch
again to get things back!

Incidentally, the graphics still isn't working properly - suspect its
faulty, but its displaying the same problems as a 4650 I tried a couple of
weeks ago, so I'm a bit flummoxed!

 

[Paul]

The HD4830 just wouldn't play - tried everything I knew of with drivers, but
games are just unplayable due to wierd texture lines and artifacts. I
finally caved in and reformatted my primary (Samsung 1TB) hard disk. This
drive was previously partitioned into 50GB C: (Fat32 system) and 950GB D: -
NTFS data. Stuck in the Windows XP install CD and booted from it, but it
couldn't find any partitions on the drive! My only option was to create a
new partition, so I just agreed with it and created a slightly smaller than
50GB partition. Of course, now that it has messed about with partitions, XP
can't find the second partition on the drive.

Anyone know a reliable or good way of recoving my second partition?

Before you all shout backups at me - yes I have backups of all my important
data, but I had loads of GBs of games on the drive and I would rather
recover them than have to re-install them and re-play them from scratch
again to get things back!

Incidentally, the graphics still isn't working properly - suspect its
faulty, but its displaying the same problems as a 4650 I tried a couple of
weeks ago, so I'm a bit flummoxed!

There are a few possibilities as to how it was messed about.

If the first partition was made smaller, it might have only affected
the first partition, and left a small gap to the second partition.

<-- New_C ---> <--- gap ---> <--------------- 950GB NTFS ----------------->

Or, the partition table could have been modified (overwritten if you
will), with the new, smaller first partition. Which would cause a
meaningless portion to be added to the front of the second partition.

<-- New_C ---> <-- 950+GB NTFS with crap at the front of the partition --->

You could run a program like TestDisk. One of the things it tries to do,
is search for a value partition on the disk, and then offer to tidy
up the partition table. It could remove the "snout" from the second
partition, such that the new and smaller partition is still first, then
a gap, then the second partition. After that, the second partition
should be visible again.

TestDisk runs from a number of environments. The only trick to remember,
is if you don't like how things are going, and the menu doesn't offer
a "quit" option, you can try the Unix "control-C" key combo, to quit
the program. That might prevent the program from updating the
partition table, if things weren't going well.

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

A second freebie, is an old utility from the PowerQuest product line.
Symantec has some tools on their FTP site. PTEDIT32.exe will offer
you the numeric details of the partition table. You can do some
math there, and see where the current partition table is pointing.
(Use the LBA length and offset, rather than the mostly useless CHS.)
I don't do edits with this, but do use it to verify what is in
there. And especially if you're about to run TestDisk, it would be
nice to have a copy of the numbers for later reference. So you
can see what TestDisk has done.

Raw numbers.
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip

More or less like Disk Management.
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PartInNT.zip

Paul

 

[GT]

There are a few possibilities as to how it was messed about.

If the first partition was made smaller, it might have only affected
the first partition, and left a small gap to the second partition.

<-- New_C ---> <--- gap ---> <--------------- 950GB
NTFS ----------------->

Or, the partition table could have been modified (overwritten if you
will), with the new, smaller first partition. Which would cause a
meaningless portion to be added to the front of the second partition.

<-- New_C ---> <-- 950+GB NTFS with crap at the front of the
partition --->

You could run a program like TestDisk. One of the things it tries to do,
is search for a value partition on the disk, and then offer to tidy
up the partition table. It could remove the "snout" from the second
partition, such that the new and smaller partition is still first, then
a gap, then the second partition. After that, the second partition
should be visible again.

TestDisk runs from a number of environments. The only trick to remember,
is if you don't like how things are going, and the menu doesn't offer
a "quit" option, you can try the Unix "control-C" key combo, to quit
the program. That might prevent the program from updating the
partition table, if things weren't going well.

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

A second freebie, is an old utility from the PowerQuest product line.
Symantec has some tools on their FTP site. PTEDIT32.exe will offer
you the numeric details of the partition table. You can do some
math there, and see where the current partition table is pointing.
(Use the LBA length and offset, rather than the mostly useless CHS.)
I don't do edits with this, but do use it to verify what is in
there. And especially if you're about to run TestDisk, it would be
nice to have a copy of the numbers for later reference. So you
can see what TestDisk has done.

Raw numbers.
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip

More or less like Disk Management.
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PartInNT.zip

Paul

Thanks for those - will check them out next week.

 

[GT]

Well if you did a fresh install,
you will still have to re-install your games etc

Most games don't actually require you to run through the install process in
order for them to run as nothing usually gets updated in the OS when you
install most games. Most games will run from the folder they are installed
in (subtle difference). I install all games inside a folder called Games on
my D: drive (not the system drive). I can then re-install XP on the C: drive
and continue to use the games on the D: drive without doing another install.
I occasionally install games on 1 PC and then simply copy the game folder to
the other PC and it works just fine. I have only found 1 game that actually
requires an installation every time - Freelancer - the fonts go all wrong if
you don't do an install!

Even Steam works in this way - doesn't require an install.

 

[~misfit~]

The HD4830 just wouldn't play - tried everything I knew of with
drivers, but games are just unplayable due to wierd texture lines and
artifacts. I finally caved in and reformatted my primary (Samsung
1TB) hard disk. This drive was previously partitioned into 50GB C:
(Fat32 system) and 950GB D: - NTFS data. Stuck in the Windows XP
install CD and booted from it, but it couldn't find any partitions on
the drive! My only option was to create a new partition, so I just
agreed with it and created a slightly smaller than 50GB partition. Of
course, now that it has messed about with partitions, XP can't find
the second partition on the drive.
Anyone know a reliable or good way of recoving my second partition?

Before you all shout backups at me - yes I have backups of all my
important data, but I had loads of GBs of games on the drive and I
would rather recover them than have to re-install them and re-play
them from scratch again to get things back!

Incidentally, the graphics still isn't working properly - suspect its
faulty, but its displaying the same problems as a 4650 I tried a
couple of weeks ago, so I'm a bit flummoxed!

Did you update the firmware on the drive a few months ago when Seagae
admitted problems and posted firmware updates for certain of their drives? I
did both my 500GB drives, it's non-data destructive.

 

[GT]

Did you update the firmware on the drive a few months ago when Seagae
admitted problems and posted firmware updates for certain of their drives?
I did both my 500GB drives, it's non-data destructive.

No. Its a Samsung!

 

[~misfit~]

No. Its a Samsung!

LOL, then it's good thing you didn't update with the Seagate firmware. ;-)