Can't access partition.


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Hi there,

i stupidly tried to resize the E partition of my hard drive on my PC using Partition Logic (Windows XP is installed on C and E is just for storage) without backing up the files first.

Now i can't access E at all.

Even when i try to recover the files with Ontrack Easy Recovery Pro i'm told the files are RAW not NTFS as they were before i tryed to resize.

Has anyone any idea how i can sort this out??

Cheers,

Steve.

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If you have a Ubuntu (or other such Linux LiveCD) I can help.

Boot it, and find out the partition types with a

sudo fdisk -l command (lower case letter "L", not the number one)

If it claims it is "raw", it might just mean unpartitioned (not defined in the partition table).

If so, then you probably could just assign that an NTFS partition type and be just fine. :yes:

Any time you change partition information, you put your files at risk. Most apps will pop up a window telling you this, at least the first time it is run. They are serious. Hopefully we can recover your data, then next time maybe a backup would be a good idea (you ought to have a periodic backup anyhow, not just before making changes).

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With partition logic after you had it resized, did you actually tell it to go ahead and proceed with the changes? I've used it before and stupidly didn't hit go and then VOILA it worked beautifully.

Right click My Computer - Manage and then on the left hand side look for Disk Management (under storage) and you should see that extra hard drive with maybe a question mark or exclamation mark. Take a screen shot of what you see.

You may have to jump back into the Partition Logic and resize the partition, mark it active, and tell it to "Go" or start.

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I'm watiting on a mate to download Ubuntu for me as i'm using a USB data modem at the moment while my ISP switch me to a faster exchange and it's very slow and drops the connection quite often.

I normally do back up my data to an external drive but was in a rush so didn't bother and, Murphy's Law.....

As for Partition Logic, yes i ran the resize and towards the very end i got an error message sasying "Report Error. Now click on ok" or something along those lines, which i did and then quit and restarted the PC to discover i couldn't access E.

Here's my Disk Management Screenshot:

DskMngmntPrntScrn.doc

Any help is much appreciated.

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Ugh. Why attach an image as a Word .doc file? :ermm:

Anyhow, it seems that all you may need to do is to re-declare "E:" as "NTFS". DO NOT FORMAT, just set the filesystem type.

I know the Linux tools can do this without wanting to touch the data areas. Not familiar enough with the Windows manager to know if it will try formatting or not if you set that to NTFS.

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Just going to pick up the Ubuntu CD now.

As i've never used or even seen this before can you give me some instructions as to what i need to do with it please?

Cheers,

Steve.

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Do the sudo fdisk-l I mentioned before, and make sure that the partition is not overlapping the previous "C:" partition. An overlap is bad.

If there is no overlap, you can start fdisk at the terminal for an interactive session:

sudo fdisk /dev/sda (assuming that sda is the drive in question - see the output of first command to verify drive)

Once there, use the menus to see what the hex code is for NTFS (I don't remember off the top of my head, but the program will tell you the code for all of the supported filesystems). Then use the menus to set the type for your problem partition to the NTFS code.

Write the changes and exit.

You should be able to even mount the drive now in Linux and see if you can browse it using the GUI 'explorer'. Or reboot and see if Windows is happy with it.

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  • 1 month later...

Sorry about the delay in my reply as i'm moving house at the moment so my stuff is all over the place and excuse my ignorance as this is the first time i've ever seen Ubuntu but how do i do a sudo fdisk-l??

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Ok so i managed to sudo fdisk -l and this is what i got. Any idea what i should do next?

Disk /dev/sda: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk identifier: 0xb56bb56b

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sda1 * 1 3952 31744408+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sda2 3953 9964 48291390 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)

/dev/sda5 3953 9964 48291358+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

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  • 2 weeks later...

Not sure what you started off with, but that is a valid partition table.

Partition #1 starts at the beginning, then goes to 3952

You have an extended starting right after that, from 1953 to 9964 (the end of the drive)

That space is wholly used by another NTFS partition.

I guess you can try a tool called "testdisk" in Ubuntu. You will have to install it with a sudo apt-get install testdisk. You can run it from the same terminal session with a sudo testdisk (you need to make sure your terminal is stretched to at least 25 lines high to run the app).

It will look at your drive data space and try to determine what the proper partition data should be to match it.

And with things this messed up, I would recommend that you back up your data as soon as you are able to, then reformat and reinstall Windows - to make sure everything is clean.

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