hy boys.


i need a urgent help cos happen one new problem that i never had before.

i have 2 HDDs....both have systems intalled and works....well,no more.
yesterday one of that HDDs loose the formatation without reason.

the bios recognize the HDD and his label,model,size,etc.but not the system.
if i run with the other HDD the system don't recognize the first HDD.

is one Sansung HDD 40Gb.
i don't did any format or fdisk cos i hope to find a way to restore without losse what i have in the partition D of that HDD sansung.....anyone have a clue?
i don't know what happen and i can't loose what have in the D partition!
how can i get the data from partition D if the system or the boot disquete don't "see" that hdd as "alive"?
partition magic or something like that can do any "magic" or miracle for me?

all help is welcome and i always was afraid of HDD sansung cos the temper is hot all the time but help me please.....it's my backup of the forum from 2 years and i can't loose it and some more importants backups.

please, all and/or any hints are welcome!
i can't do a simple fdisk to restore the HDD... it's irrelevant.
..i want and need the data in D partition to trash or not that sansung HDD.

please...it' very urgent!
thanks all!

In last attempt you will need a good data recovery tool. I suggest you filescavenger. I restored a full partition with that (but you will need an other disk with enougth space to hold all the data that are on the lost one).

thank you very much dear friend Phil!

i have another empty 40Gb Hdd to put everything but please, one more help:
i don't know "filescavenger" and where to find this...can you please send me dirertions ?

this prog can see the hd that only the bios can find?

more strange informations Phil.
after i call for a friend he told me:
"write in dos prompt with a boot disk:
fdisk /mbr
and enter"

i did and faster the prompt back.
after reboot,the C partiton with 8Gb is back and working(i'm using the sansung hd now) but the D partition with 32Gb is missed.

i never saw or someone told me things like that.
C is now perfect and without errors after full scandisk but ..]
where is partition D

can you understand what happen????
do you know some more command to back the D partition?

it's a surprising problem for me and never saw anyone with this problem.


thanks in advance for more hints(if have more) and comments about it.

It's gone bye bye, because fdisk /MBR (Master Boot Record) recreates the boot footprint on the drive, so the D: partition is not visible.
I'm not sure if Norton will be able to recreate your second partition, though

-kwag

trust..norton can recreate but the problem is that i have new things is the ocult partition D that don't have in the last ghost image...

more strange and hard to understand:
first all without reason was invisible.
after fdisk/mbr the C partition back exact like was: 8Gb and the system running like before.
the D partition with 32Gb is invisible but not means that was destroyed...it's there but invisible for the system.....right or wrong?
i will find a way to turn D visible again cos i can't trust that D is empty.

think boys, it don't hurt ...in your brains have solutions..

@jorel,

Try running the system defrag with analysis only, and see whether that
area shows as a separate drive (partition) or a system reserved area
(should be green) or nothing. This should confirm if the data went
bye-bye. If it shows as reserved, you will need a program to recover
this reserved area.

-BP

A partition can be declared as "hidden" and I already had this once with winME.

"Partition Magic" can unhide a partitition but this can surely be done with other tools.

the whole data of partition D is gone!

i have one big and empty partition.....

partition magic can't work to restore the data but can restore that misterious deleted partition....no one program that i use can see something inside that partition.....
i hate san(of a b...)sung(ed) hds.

Did you try Easy Datz Recovery ?

There are A LOT of data recovery tools, even if a most works only on win2000/winXP (as you already saw )

http://www.tucows.com/system/filerec...5_revdate.html

thanks for the link and hints Phil.

a short story:
last year one informatic school in my city loose everything after some problems in his HDD(that HDD was the "central brain" of the whole school)
they call me and came to my house asking for help.
i have easy recovery pro and we could get everything form that HDD and was needed long hours cos easy recovery is very very slow.

using that program in my HDD ,don't find anything inside D partition.
i'm loosing the will to restore....

but if i install XP and use one of that news programs can i have hope or don't will help?
is hard to answer i know , i'm only calling for more hints.
thanks in advance!

Hi Jorel,
That's what you should have done in the 1st place before any fdisk /mbr.
Sometime ago a virus also distroied my D: partition and I easily recovered 95% of it's files/folders using easy recovery.
But you reconstructed the MBR of the harddrive, which is good in some situations but not in this one...
Installing XP won't change anything unless you can't install easy recovery under Win98SE.
But you said you already ran it and it found nothing on your drive, or did I miss something?
Cheers

__________________
Rui

From my own experience, as long as you don't write new things on the disc, the old ones are there !
Filescavenger (the first tool I gave to you) already restored for me documents I erased 1 year ago and didn't even remember there were on that disc.

If you can install Xp on an other disc and launch filescavenger, perhaps you will be abble to restore the lost HD.