FDISK DELETED PARTITION!!! Have NOT restarted yet...!

[Grover]

First, I apoligize for the frantic nature of this post, AND for not thoroughly SEARCHING this forum; I live in the northeast US, there is snow on the lines, and the power has gone off twice today...

I accidently DELETED THE PARTITION that had Win 2K (and files, of course) on it. FDISK said the effects would NOT take effect until I RESTART my system, which I have NOT done yet.

When I take FDISK option "[4] DISPLAY PARTITION INFORMATION," it NO LONGER shows my Win 2K partition... However, I CAN STILL ACCESS "E:" (the win 2K partition) through DOS, and I can see the directories and files.

QUESTION: IS THERE ANY WAY TO 'REINSTATE' THE E: PARTITION? Is there any way to get it recognized?


MY SYSTEM IS ON (for now; the snow may alter that at any moment!)


Also...if I cannot reinstate the E: partition... WHAT DOS COMMANDS CAN I USE TO SAVE THOSE FILES AND PROGRAMS? (I realize this is extrememly weird of me to do, but...) I don't know the proper sytax for COPY and XCOPY; I can't seem to get them to work. Could someone please give me an example?


THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


PS. it is 9:17pm, EST...

[jtdoom]

hi
use this to xclone the entire content of the partition onto a partition that has enough free space to recieve all the files

ftp://ftp.sac.sk/pub/sac/utildisk/xclone13.zip

unzip it to C: (to the root of the drive)
copy xclone to a floppy

if that machine you have not rebooted is still running windows
you do this by running a dosbox
start
run
command (this works best from within a windows dosbox...)
cd\
if D: has enough room
D:
cd\
md 12345678

A:xclone E: D:\12345678

==========
if you have no windows available
copy xclone to a floppy
from the real mode dosprompt

A:xclone E: D:

from real mode DOS, you pray that this keeps your long filenames intact.
when it does an entire partition, this usually works.

=========
sorry for the edit
refresh your page

[jtdoom]

you could just as well create a folder even if you run it from real mode dos
==========

if you have no windows available
copy xclone to a floppy
from the real mode dosprompt
D:
cd\
md 123456
A:xclone E: D:\123456

from real mode DOS, you pray that this keeps your long filenames intact.
when it does an entire partition, this usually works.

[jtdoom]

just to let you know that xclone is running on my machine while I am posting...
(in a box)

====
anyway

lets hope it can clone over content.
after it did, do not reboot yet.

if you know what size this partition had, run fdisk, and recreate it
(it should be made exact same size)
I don't know wether you also removed the 7 megabyte partition created during windows 2000 setup
if you did, this could become very hairy.

but, if you knew the size, and recreated the partition, then run this command
unlock C:
unlock D:
unlock E:
(do all hard drive and partition letters)

fdisk /status

esc
fdisk
y
4
esc
esc
if it showed partition and file system for E: , then you have more luck that you know.
run dir E: /w /o /p /a
if it shows the files, you may have a ton of luck.

and at one point, you gonna have to reboot.
if xclone did what it was supposed to do, swallow hard and do so.

there are other recovery tools available

[jmatt]

http://dos.li5.org/downloads/rec.htm
http://home19.inet.tele.dk/svolaf/utilities.htm

I have never seen ANYTHING like this particular freeware device driver. While only weighing in
under 2k, and taking up about 3-5k of memory, this little device driver scans your entire
drive for lost partitions, it then assigns read-only drive letters to them to allow you to
recover data.

[jtdoom]

hi jmatt

these are nice tools.

I also spotted LFN in there, which has a long name file copy tool
lcopy E:\* D:\ABCD1234 /v

(not *.* , just a single bullet... one looks at these readmees on a good machine before one bites the bullet)

also spotted an old fave of mine by norton!

[jmatt]

Thanks Jaak

[Grover]

Hey, thanks for the feedback and help!


Was able to save most data on the Windows 2K partition...

...did lose VIDEO FILM FOOTAGE data on my RAID striped Cheetahs... but oh well. I was going to clean those off anyhow, and I'd already renderd off movies, so no loss there.

Thanks again, I'm definitely checking out this forum from time to time...lot's of knowledgable people.