Accessing a partition

[Barry]

Here's one for the techno-geeks. Recently merged two partitions (both 20gb logicals in same expansion) using Partition Magic #7. After the merge, which went normal, am unable to access the new partition. system says the logical partition/drive must be formatted. However, viewing the partition in PM7, the used and free sections are correct. Any idea on what to use to recover the drive?

Windows XP SP2 with 60gb drive. C: =20gb and the remaining in D: = 40gb.
Yeah I know. One is suppose to backup before doing major operations. Guess I took a brain dump that day.

[Autoload]

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

Going to have to go with a virtual CD boot (see documentation) or put that hard drive in another computer as a slave drive. Then install this program on the second computer to retreive the data from the slave.

[Skunkboy]

I'm fond of the long-standing Norton Disk Doctor. I completely lost a partition back in the fall and the recent NDD didn't fail me - longfilenames and all. On a full (less than 200mb left) 40gb drive, I only lost 30-40 files which isn't all that bad considering.

[Barry]

Hi again,

Ran Norton SystemWorks 2003 Disk Doctor from the CD and it won't run on the drive. Says the drive doesn't exist. But Partition Magic still shows the drive as being there, just won't open it up. Only option left that I haven't tried in PM is the format. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[David Byrnes]

When working like this with drives & partitions, I personally prefer to backup, make the changes, format, then restore. It usually works much better than trying to merge 2 partitions. And I've always been a little leery of PM anyway, though to be honest I haven't used it in a while. I know, you don't want to format. My best suggestion at this point is to contact their tech support, and see if they can help. Failing that, format.

[patrickpawlowsk]

I agree with David for somewhat more simplistic reasons. I have never owned a copy of PM, never had a pirated copy, and I have never found a free/opensource Partition Manager. And probably the biggest reason. I've never been afraid to rebuild a machine. In fact I enjoy it. I keep an unattended installation floppy for all my machines which makes the process much easier.

One other thing. This is exactly the reason that, although I am a network admin, I seldom see a reason to partition a drive. I have heard many, many reasons for doing so, but in my experience it always comes to the above problem. No matter how hard you plan and think it through you end up running out of space on this side and have plenty left on that side.

[Barry]

Well, I guess it is time to suck it in and take the inevitable plunge. Turned on the computer over the weekend to work on accessing the partition. And loh and behold, the drive doesn't boot. After a couple more hits on the reset button, and attempting to boot from floppy, appears the boot partition has also gone to lunch. So I picked up a spare drive that used to be in my server, and installed XP. System came up and present me with a nice large space. Remember, I said it was in my server. Well, since XP installed on the boot partition, guess what was on the other partition? A backup of my other drive's partition, as well as a backup of all my data.

No I'm not going to install Partition Magic, but I did pick up an external 120mb Seagate drive at our local Walmart. They were on clearance for $100. I've now got a couple backups of everything and going to spend the next couple days burning some cds. Hopefully, I won't be taking brain dumps and doing radical moves without major thought process.

So thanks to all your suggestions, chuckles, elbow in the ribs, and any other comments. To think I espouse backup your data, and I didn't take the thoughtful steps myself, or at least ensure I had a backup.

Take care, stay dry, stay cool.