I lost my NTFS partition by mistake using GRUB
 

Hello...

I have 1 hard disk with 3 partitions on it..
C: windows server 2003
D: personal data (windows)
E: RedHat Linux 9

I reinstalled windows so I had to reinstall grub too... but acidently I typed in grub-install /dev/hda5... I think hda5 was my D drive which has a lot of important personal data.. then I just reinstall grub using /dev/hda...

I did not notice any problem until this morning.. when I was trying to open D drive in windows 2003 this morning.. it said.. "not formatted.. "

I am panic... man.. I must have those data back..

I have tried gpart to get some information about D drive but.. it shows it as RAW drive...

and Partition Magic does not support windows server.. tried volume manager and Partition Expert... but they did not work..

PLEASE HELP ME~~~~~ thanks~~~

not sure if this will work or not, but you can try a program called explore2fs, it is for windows, it lets you look at linux drives from windows, it might let you read the screwed up partition

sorry, dont have a link to the download site, a google search should get it

found the link: http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm

thanks~~
 

Thanks very much for the link and the reply..

But I tried to see the drive in windows but it doesn't even recognize the drive... I have used Partition Expert, and I found that D drive's format status is RAW....

what I am thinking is that the beginning cluster that stores all the informations about the drive, is damaged or deleted... and since I do not have an access from windows or linux, I believe there is nothing overwritten on the drive, so there is a great possibility to restore it...

but the problem is... I have no idea what I should do...

Anyway thanks a lot~~~

I have had the same problem... Raw data, etc.

If you can solve it I would appreciate an email with the solution.

Thanks,
Daniel

Try using Easy Recovery, is a pretty good program, unfortunately is not free but you could check, scanning your hard drive with it, that your data is still there

http://www.ontrack.com/freesoftware/

Solution..
 

Here is what I did.. good luck!!



I have been working on this problem for a couple of days... I have used several restoring applications in windows and linux... finally I found something that works great...

It is called Restore2000 Professional for windows... I just ran it and it showed me everything that was in the drive.. I restored what I need to C: and formatted D: and moved them back..

And actually thanks a lot for the information that you gave above.. Even though I solved it differently, it is a very useful and great information to know... I will keep it in my computer for the future reference..

Thanks again~~~