Harddisk recovery - Linux Forums

01-16-2007	#1 (permalink)
Redman Extraordinary Gentleman Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: The green fields of Brabant, Netherlands Posts: 605	Harddisk recovery A collegue of mine is faced with a crashed computer. No, not with Linux, but with Windows XP. He has taken it to our IT company and they told him (what I already feared) that his harddisk is alright, except that all partition information is lost. They also told him to keep the harddisk safe until the techniques are there to recover the data I was wondering, is there a way I can boot a live-cd on it and obtain the lost data?? I am not sure fixing the MBR will automatically solve this problem. Anyone come across something like this before? __________________ "Yoda of Borg are we: Futile resistance is. Assimilate you, we will." Distributions in use: CentOS 5.3 Registered Linux user #327830 100% on Linux since september 7, 2003 - now I am free!

01-16-2007	#2 (permalink)
devils casper Super Moderator Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Chandigarh, India Posts: 21,049	download TestDisk, boot up from any LiveCD and execute TestDisk. it will recover lost partition table. it works perfectly. you can use UBCD or System Rescue CD too. i always try TestDisk first and if it fails ( rarely ), UBCD or SRCD does the job. Casper __________________ It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. - Gertrude Stein New Users: Read This First

01-18-2007	#3 (permalink)
Redman Extraordinary Gentleman Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: The green fields of Brabant, Netherlands Posts: 605	Casper ... you are the man! Bananas deserved: After fooling around with a livecd (which wouldn't boot regularly on the machine), I added a harddisk of my own and installed Linux on it. The crashed harddisk was connected as slave behind it. And after installing TestDisk I got it running again in 5 minutes. Job done! This turned out to be a very usefull exercise. And I have little doubt it could help others. Conclusion: sticky __________________ "Yoda of Borg are we: Futile resistance is. Assimilate you, we will." Distributions in use: CentOS 5.3 Registered Linux user #327830 100% on Linux since september 7, 2003 - now I am free!

01-19-2007	#4 (permalink)
devils casper Super Moderator Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Chandigarh, India Posts: 21,049	ahha ! thanx for Bananas. Casper __________________ It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. - Gertrude Stein New Users: Read This First

01-26-2007	#5 (permalink)
casperl Just Joined! Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 9	What if the computer could not detect a disk even as a slave (means bios can not detect it either)? Is there any way to recover it? I had such a disk now..

01-26-2007	#6 (permalink)
devils casper Super Moderator Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Chandigarh, India Posts: 21,049	you can recover Partitions of healthy harddisk only. if BIOS is not detecting Harddisk, it means disk is bad. try UBCD or System Rescue CD. both CDs has a lot of disk recovery tools. Casper __________________ It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. - Gertrude Stein New Users: Read This First

03-20-2007

#7 (permalink)

hamburger123

Linux Newbie

Join Date: Jul 2005

Location: Illinois, USA

Posts: 111

Quote:

Originally Posted by devils_casper

download TestDisk, boot up from any LiveCD and execute TestDisk. it will recover lost partition table. it works perfectly.

Wow that worked amazingly. I thought I had to reinstall everything before I found this thread. Thanks so much!

04-10-2007	#8 (permalink)
l8forwork Just Joined! Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: iowa Posts: 62	another try norton utilities norton has a progrom call DISK DOCTOR which ships with nortion utilities and i think system works. pre ntfs day it would fix partition errors etc. it runs from cdrom boot... with a little lookin' ill bet the new program fixes ntfs ---- ill check and update p.s. i own all of nortons software now fer about 10 yrs. update:: When not to use Norton Disk Doctor Do not run the DOS version of Norton Disk Doctor on partitions that were created with Linux FDISK or Disk Druid. If you choose to fix errors on partitions that were created with these utilities, it is critical that you make an Undo file. Use Norton Disk Doctor to fix an invalid partition only if it is completely inaccessible from Windows or DOS. Norton Disk Doctor can only revive FAT or FAT32 partitions on computers that are running Windows 2000/XP. It cannot revive NTFS partitions. To repair corrupted boot records, use the DOS version of Norton Disk Doctor; do not use the Windows version. The Windows version diagnoses the problem, but it will not repair the boot record as well as the DOS version of Norton Disk Doctor. Norton Disk Doctor might report an error if you use a third-party boot loader. This error report can be safely ignored. The CD does not support running Norton Disk Doctor on NTFS partitions or FAT16 drives with 64 KB clusters (available in Windows 2000/XP only). If you need support for this capability, install the complete Norton Disk Doctor package on your computer.

04-10-2007	#9 (permalink)
devils casper Super Moderator Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Chandigarh, India Posts: 21,049	why not to use TestDisk OR UBCD? why to care about Norton's do/don't? both if these works fine on all FIleSytems. __________________ It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. - Gertrude Stein New Users: Read This First

04-16-2007	#10 (permalink)
Redman Extraordinary Gentleman Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: The green fields of Brabant, Netherlands Posts: 605	I think we all have lots of options now. So topic closed. __________________ "Yoda of Borg are we: Futile resistance is. Assimilate you, we will." Distributions in use: CentOS 5.3 Registered Linux user #327830 100% on Linux since september 7, 2003 - now I am free!

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