deleted/broken partition table; problems finding partitions
Posted: 07 Aug 2012, 20:26
HDD: WD3200AAKS-00G3A0
C/H/S: 38913/255/63
4 partitions:
1) ~ 6gb Linux swap
2) ~ 78 gb Linux installation (EXT4)
3&4) two Windows XP installations ~ 110 gb each (NTFS)
At first, TestDisk only found the first two and said they can't be recovered. I did, however, manage to write out the swap partition.
Here's what I'm doing:
start TestDisk, set the cylinder count if not recognised correctly, and open Analyze and start a Quick Search (I choose No for Vista or later because I've never had Vista or later on this PC with this hard drive).
When the quick search is finished, it shows me the second partition and "The following partition can't be recovered".
When I click "Continue", it shows me the swap partition; then I click Enter, do the Deeper Search and it finds nothing.
It never finds the NTFS partitions, but those are most important to me. I don't really care about the Linux ones; I've got no data there.
So the question is - how do I go about this? What could I possibly do to recover them? Perhaps some other tool would be able to fix this?
Perhaps it's worth noting that I was using the grub loader and I think it won't help if I can just recover the partitions and the MBR; it'll probably need something else too.
P.S. I'm using Hiren's Boot CD 15.1 now (Parted Magic 6.7).
C/H/S: 38913/255/63
4 partitions:
1) ~ 6gb Linux swap
2) ~ 78 gb Linux installation (EXT4)
3&4) two Windows XP installations ~ 110 gb each (NTFS)
At first, TestDisk only found the first two and said they can't be recovered. I did, however, manage to write out the swap partition.
Here's what I'm doing:
start TestDisk, set the cylinder count if not recognised correctly, and open Analyze and start a Quick Search (I choose No for Vista or later because I've never had Vista or later on this PC with this hard drive).
When the quick search is finished, it shows me the second partition and "The following partition can't be recovered".
When I click "Continue", it shows me the swap partition; then I click Enter, do the Deeper Search and it finds nothing.
It never finds the NTFS partitions, but those are most important to me. I don't really care about the Linux ones; I've got no data there.
So the question is - how do I go about this? What could I possibly do to recover them? Perhaps some other tool would be able to fix this?
Perhaps it's worth noting that I was using the grub loader and I think it won't help if I can just recover the partitions and the MBR; it'll probably need something else too.
P.S. I'm using Hiren's Boot CD 15.1 now (Parted Magic 6.7).