hmmm....where'd my partitions go??

james.miller · 10 Oct 2007 at 11:39

bit of a strange problem this. just before i built this pc, the drive was in my old pc which i was having a few problems with (just before the motherboard blew up lol).

some how, its managed to loose (i think) the MFT on two of the 3 partitions. the partitions are there, but they are reported as 0 bytes and arent accessable. whats the quickest way to get these up and working again?

rpstewart · 10 Oct 2007 at 11:42

Is that figure being reported in Explorer or in Disk Management?

james.miller · 10 Oct 2007 at 11:47

well, explorer reports nothing. disk management reports the right size but reckons they are RAW and not ntfs

Jolly_Jason · 10 Oct 2007 at 11:53

Have you tried accessing them with a Pre-Installer? Also what about programs like ERD commander, PartionMagic... etc ..etc

Vimes · 10 Oct 2007 at 11:58

Maybe someone will be able to help you with an easier solution but I had just 'lost' a partition of 130GB (60GB of stuff on it). I wasn't too bothered about most of the contents, I have backups, but I was bothered about my photos folder. Even though I had backups they were not done that recently and so I would have lost quite a few important piccies.

So I tried many ways to recover my lost RAW partition, being careful that I don't lose it by trying to recover it...!!!

Eventually I discovered this...
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizardpro/index.htm
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/screenshot.htm

...and it just did what it says on the tin...!!!!

I was amazed as it correctly guessed at the size of the partitions on the drive, matched to the folder and file contents, and I managed to recover everything with zero loss.

As I have written there maybe other options for you, but that one worked for me

Good luck.

rpstewart · 10 Oct 2007 at 12:00

After a quick google the general opinion seems to be that some data recovery software is what you need here. GetDataBack seems to be mentioned a lot, there's a trial version which will at least tell you if recovery is possible. TestDisk is also mentioned and that has the advantage of being free.