PM 7 destroyed my partitions...now what?

**mope** · 06-03-2002, 01:04 PM

I ran Partition Magic and it reported that my partition table had errors and asked if I'd like to fix them. I wasn't thinking and replied yes. My hard drive has 255 cylinders but now it reports as only having 63 and I don't have any partitions. I have a couple of hard drives so I'm installing linux on another drive this evening. How do I get the data off the first drive?

**pbharris** · 06-03-2002, 08:25 PM

hello,
what type of file system was on the drive? Getting the data back may be quite tough, I would look at what the partion say right now, you can use linux's fdisk to do this.

i would also look at PM 7 to see what kind of things they suggest...

and oh yea! welcome to linux junior

**BurntAsh** · 06-03-2002, 10:16 PM

i wish the mandrake installation partition tool (diskdrake is it?) was a distributed app because i love that thing its so easy and fast to use.

**mope** · 06-03-2002, 11:54 PM

hello,
what type of file system was on the drive? *Getting the data back may be quite tough, *I would look at what the partion say right now, *you can use linux's fdisk to do this.

i would also look at PM 7 to see what kind of things they suggest...

and oh yea! *welcome to linux junior

Thank you. I came over after reading LNO vs LinuxJr

. Anyway, I had ReiserFS on all the partitions except the boot (ext2). How do I get linux fdisk without reinstalling on another drive?* I used Mandrake's diskdrake but it shows the partition as empty. Partition Magic 7 shows "Partition table error" and will not load the information for the drive. Also, could someone please verify whether PM was the problem or if the drive is faulty? The drive was working fine until PM asked me if it could "fix" the partition table, but then the drive is listed as only having 63 cylinders (instead of 255) and unreadable (no partitions or anything). Could PM mess up how the drive reports its cylinders or is that the drive being wacky? Thanks for the responses.

[edit] * The other drive I dug up isn't responding too well. May have to salvage this one. [/edit]

**pbharris** · 06-04-2002, 01:10 AM

hello,
i don't know about Mandrake - but i know redhat has a rescue mode. fdisk should be available at that time. also, if there is a an option to go into advanced settings then try that and see what it is.

For the incorrect number of cylinders you may wish to make sure the BIOS is set have the drive be in LBA mode, if not then the number of cylinders can be messed up, why this would change suddenly I have no idea...

the best place for tools to diagnois your drive is to go to the manufaturtuers web site, as far as i am aware all drive makers have tools to do checks.

hope that helps