Messed up HD Partition - advice needed.

[Yoko]

Hy folks,

 

... sorry for my bad english, it's a foreign language to me.

Thanks for taking the time to read it!

 

I have a serious problem and need some advice from someone

experienced with with HDD partitions on the PC platform.

 

Situation before mess up:

 

- One HD with 250 GB

 

- First partition WinXP, 70GB, NTFS, primary, set active

 

- Second parttion 57GB Fat32 empty, primary

 

- Third partition 90GB NTFS, all my Data, primary

 

 

Messing up:

 

Installing OSX, boting up with DVD, using disk util to delete / convert

my second partition (the FAT32) to journaled HFS+

Strangely, partition is shown as "disk0p3" - but the size is correct, 57GB.

After erase, the partition is recognized as HFS+, but shown as "disk0p2"

 

Install went smooth, restart fine, os x is working.

OS X boot manager offers me to boot "foreign OS" and I boot into my Win XP.

Open Explorer and guess what...

My third partition with all my data on it is visible - but empty!

Left click on the drive - explorer asks if I want to format the disk. (Of course I don't)

 

Aconis Disk Director (similar to Partition Magic) shows the drive as NTFS primary

partition without (!) file-system

Quote: "File system error: invalid format" --> See picture attached.

 

A rescue tool called "GetDataBack for NTFS" sees all data in that empty partition,

so nothing is gone as of yet!

I think it is just a wrong header info or partition table messed up or something like that.

I am not able to copy the files (90 GB....) elsewhere as I don't have another big HDD...

 

ANY help, suggestion for a tool or advice how to make XP recognize the content again is

*greatly* appreciated!

 

Thanks in advance for any comment / help,

 

Yoko

 

 

Acronis screen shot (note the grey bar partition E with "FS: none" --> File system: none)

 

[marliwahoo]

I'm not the guy to help you recover the files. Sorry. Though you may be able to recover them.

 

Next time.

Do not do any of the partitioning of drives (with files you want to keep on them) in Disk Utility.

 

In the situation you described you should partition with acronis just like you did .... and just reformat the OSX partition only with Disk Utility. Do not partiton.

 

OSX Disk Utility should be used to erase and reformat existing partitions - not partition a drive where you want to keep the files intact.

 

If you want to erase the intire drive - Use Disk utility - partition/format to your hearts content - convert file formats in windows or acronis.

[wmarsh]

I also found OS X installer wiped my NTFS data partition.

 

Found two ways to recover all data.

 

1) Partition Magic is able to find and recreate the partition table, making your data accessible again. My recollection is you have it hunt the area XP thinks is unformatted for deleted partitions.

 

2) Once I realized OS X installer did this to me every time, I learned to run PTEDIT (comes with Partition Magic) and write down on a piece of paper all partition entries. Then when OS X Installer is done, you can restore the disk by simply reentering the deleted entries with PTEDIT. This method recovers all types of partitions, not just NTFS. (For me, Solaris type BF also was deleted).

 

OS X Installer does this to my 3rd HD even when I am using it to install OS X on my 2nd HD, very curious.

 

I think the reason is I have an extended partition, followed by two primary partitions on that drive.

 

Possibly your FAT32 was an extended or logical partition too?

[marliwahoo]

Interesting - that has not happened to me. All my partitions are primary. I wonder if that has something to so with it.