i messed my partition up...trying to fix it

winstone5000 · 12-26-2005, 10:33 AM

basically, i made the mistake, of using the windows partition manager when i was drunk, and accidentally quick formatted over my linux partition.

the 1gb partition that has grub and as far as i know, the basic linux kernel is fine and still working, but the partition that has all my suse, and desktop stuff on it, is quick formatted.

how can i repair this, i only deleted the file alocation table, so everything should be absolutely fine, please help me tho.

i'm absolutely desperate....

thank you for any help whatsoever in advance

winstone5000 · 12-26-2005, 10:38 AM

actually, coming to think of it, i didnt even format it, i just deleted the partition....which should hopefully make it a lot easier to fix
i just need to fix the file allocation table some how if that make's it easier to help me
lol...thank you

saikee · 12-26-2005, 10:45 AM

Just rebuild the partition table according to your original scheme.

Use cfdisk from a Live CD.

Just don't do any foramtting or change the partition sizes.

I have a couple of hard disks with 60 and 50 partitions trashed up about half a dozen times, about half of them from Partition Magic, and rebuilt them without any loss.

After rebuilding the partition table do a re-boot and all should be back to normal. If you can't remember your own partition table then may God has mercy on your disk.

Actually it isn't as bad as that. Go and download

WPARTNFIX or PR.EXE

These are free DOS-based programs that can rebuild your partition tables using the filing system indices. Success rate depends on how much is the damage on the disk.

winstone5000 · 12-26-2005, 10:48 AM

t/y.....i'll give it a try now

winstone5000 · 12-26-2005, 11:13 AM

i've got knoppix 3.4 live, but it wont let me run cfdisk....it keeps telling me "FATAL ERROR - cannot open disk drive"
what's the problem????
i really need to get this back up and running as soon as.

thanks

saikee · 12-26-2005, 12:59 PM

Try using fdisk

You may have to delete all the partitions that are causing mischief before rebuiding the partition table.

It is common for a partitioning program to evade its responsibility when confronted with something that is illogical to it. Fdisk is the most robust tool I know but I tend to use cfdisk the moment the disk is cleared.

syg00 · 12-26-2005, 05:56 PM

If the partition had been merely deleted, you wouldn't have a problem. Testdisk is the best solution for things like that.
The message from cfdisk could be a problem. Last time I looked at the code, you get that because the sig bytes for the disk are gone.
If this is the case neither cfdisk nor fdisk will open it.