Partition table recovery

[SMabille]

Hi,

I upgraded my server motherboard, reinstalled Windows 2000 server to get the proper drivers installed, etc..
Everything worked fine except that my drive letters where not correct.... and then I was (sooooo) stupid:
I reassigned them using the disk manager without installing any SP first and of course on a large drive!
So my partition table is corrupted and my disk is unbootable.
How can I fix that (hopefully nothing should have been deleted beside the partition table) and I have a spare XP SP1 system if needed to connect the drive.
As you might guess I would like to recover the data present on the drive as I don't have backup and as it's a small home network the W2K was the only controller in the domain... so the forest root would need to be recovered too!

Thanks.

PS: If you are around London, Berkshire, Oxfordshire my data are worth a few pints if you are interested!

[Ned Seagoon]

Hi SMabille

Bad luck. The theory says that your data is lost, however once when I did something similar I ran fdisk and put a partition table back in, and without formating the drives took a look and there it was. I had remembered the size and order of the partitions and put back exactly what was there previously, and bingo, I got my data back.

If the data is vital, there are data recovery services, but they charge an arm and a leg, otherwise you can take a punt like I did, and keep your fingers crossed.

Good luck. BF

[tetonbob]

Or maybe give Gibson's Spinrite a try....I've never had the need, but have heard great things about it.

http://www.grc.com/default.htm