analmux Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 Okay, maybe this is not atari related, and there are other places for problems like this, but something bad happened today to my PC harddrive....and maybe there's someone who knows how to solve it. I have 3 HDs in my PC, one of them (drive 2: primary slave) is a Maxtor 200GB, I'm running windows millennium. I once made 3 partitions on drive 2. 1) 2GB (primary partition) 2) 133GB (extended partition, logical drive 1) 3) 64GB (extended partition, logical drive 2) On partition 2 I have (had ) all kinds of important data: pictures, music, but also my atari sourcecode files (super mario clone!!). Today I wrote data to partition 3, and after that partition 2 was gone.... After hours of fooling around with the PC and downloading a few Partition-Recovery programs I found out what exactly had happened: it turns out there's a 137GB limit to large harddisks, and writing over this limit results in an overwrite at the start of the disk (in this case from the start of the extended partition) so, now the first part (600MB) of partition 2 is overwritten....this means that my rootdirectory structure (and possibly the FATs) were distroyed. The PC doesn't even see anymore that there is a partition at all....even most of the recovery tools don't see it. ...but the happy news is: I tested the 2nd partition with a sector-editor, and searched for some sign of life....I found out that only the first part of my data is missing, and all my precious data is still there, only the PC cannot allocate it anymore.....but most of the underlying subdirectories are still there.... ....so I'm lucky for another time. So if there would be a way to recover the subdirectories, then i'd be able to get all my files back. Is there anyone here that maybe had problems like this, or knows a way to solve this problem?? many thanks in advance Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Almost Rice Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 (edited) I forgot about that limitation of Fat32. I use NTFS now and only have a small Fat32 drive for win98. I have not booted that partition in 3 years. One of the things I would do is image that drive with something like norton ghost. After that, you can do what ever you want and not be afraid of losing what is left. If the step you choose to take destroys the rest of the data, you can restore the image and do something else. So I forgot to paste. Edited January 26, 2006 by Almost Rice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+remowilliams Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 Ontracks EasyRecovery Professional should be able to help you get the remaining data back. I've had amazing results with this program in the worst of HD situations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted January 15, 2006 Share Posted January 15, 2006 Try this google search Say what??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomSW Posted January 15, 2006 Share Posted January 15, 2006 Almost Rice >> maybe look on e-bay for head-replacement... :lol: :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted January 15, 2006 Share Posted January 15, 2006 Make a sector copy backup of your hard disk using a program like Ghost or Acronis True Image. Then you can be sure no further data will be lost in trying to recover it, plus you can restore the disk image into an emulator like vmware and do your recovery there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analmux Posted January 16, 2006 Author Share Posted January 16, 2006 I've used Acronis Disk Editor now to analyze the left-overs of my data...the least thing I can still find is the subdirectories: searching for a string $2E20202020202020202020 at the start of the 1st sector of a cluster (which is the first entry "." of all directories). I think i'll do a sector copy from one drive to the other, to an existing filesystem, then go on......maybe i have to write a little c++ tool to get everything back as desired. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted January 16, 2006 Share Posted January 16, 2006 Try this google search I forgot about that limitation of Fat32. I use NTFS now and only have a small Fat32 drive for win98. I have not booted that partition in 3 years. 1000429[/snapback] It's not the limitation of FAT32. It's the limitation of what the bios and/or windows is able to handle. @Mux You really shouldn't use WinME with such big drives. Only Windows XP is able to handle them correctly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analmux Posted January 25, 2006 Author Share Posted January 25, 2006 YES!!! Thanks to a simple C++ program I wrote in half an hour, and Acronis Disk Editor I was able to regerate my FAT tables (supposing I have unfragmented files on my disk, it's a simple increasing list of 32bit numbers)....then searching with Acronis to begin of directories, then copy info of the "." folder to a selfmade directory....then everything's back. Good news: I've recovered all my Mario Clone source code. (and now quickly make a lot of backups!!!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted January 25, 2006 Share Posted January 25, 2006 Good work! And now... "Do The Mario!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Almost Rice Posted January 26, 2006 Share Posted January 26, 2006 Now, back it up! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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