mbr help

[blohin]

Hey all,
I need help figuring out how to fix a problem I just made.

Here are the steps of what I did.

I got my in-laws PC as they were complaining that its running slow and that they bought Windows 7 but never upgraded from vista.
After starting the PC which was running Vista home premium I disabled some start up programs and restarted PC so I can backup pictures, videos and such.
Hard drive on that PC had two partitions, one of about 60gb with OS on it and second partition named "Storage" of about 170gb with some programs installed on it and stuff.

While trying to backup all on a thumb drive I noticed that I cant fit all on my thumb drive so using disk management I shrank Storage partition in half and from leftover half I made an extended partition, I named it "Backups" and placed all files I had to backup on it.
All fine so far; I placed windows 7 DVD on PC and restart to install it, during setup I format 1st partition and I thought I'll speed up things so I formatted second partition as well (one named Storage), but upon formatting that one my backup partition became free space as it was extended part of Storage one.
I went ahead and installed windows 7 just to find out that I did end up with empty space instead of years of video recordings of family and such.

Note that all partitions are same size as they were when all of them were readable;
After finishing windows 7 installation I formatted second partition again and gave it "Storage" as name - so its as it was originally.

Please let me know is there a way to fix this as I cant think straight anymore

Thanks

 

[c627627]

Most of us, myself included, have found out the hard way that messing with partition tables with un-backed up data still on them is suicidal.

Wait until someone else posts because to be honest, I have not read your entire post and am only posting what I did when I lost data and how I recovered it.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

Testdisk 6.14


• To recover a damaged partition table:

1. Start testdisk_win.exe

2. Create a new log file

3. Scroll down to drive which contains the damaged partition table > Proceed

4. Intel > Analyse > Quick Search

5. Should TestDisk search for partition created under Vista ? > Y


6. If the lost partition was a primary partition, move arrows to change * to P and press Enter.
[P may already be there, if it is, still go to the next step to 'Write partition table'.]

7. Move arrows to Write and press Enter.

8. Write partition table, confirm ? (Y/N) > Y

9. You will have to reboot for the change to take effect.




• To recover individual files / individual directories from a hard drive which cannot display them in Windows because of a damaged partition table:

1. Copy Testdisk to hard drive with enough space to recover the lost files/directories
then start testdisk_win.exe

2. Create a new log file

3. Scroll down to drive which contains the files/directories to recover > Proceed

4. Intel > Analyse > Quick Search

5. Should TestDisk search for partition created under Vista ? > Y


6. Instead of moving arrows to get to the letter P, physically press key P on your keyboard.
This lists the files and directories

7. Now use arrows to move down to select any file or directory and press C on keyboard to copy selected file or directory.

or

To copy all files and directories, move the arrow to the top marked with one dot: .
Then press C on keyboard and all files and directories will be copied to the location where you ran TestDisk from.



• Use instructions above to recover files/directories from a hard drive with a damaged partition table.
If partitions already exist, it may be recovered to an image file. To create an image of the entire partition:

0. Copy Testdisk to hard drive with enough space to store the image of the partition

1. Create a new folder inside which you want to save the image.dd file then start testdisk_win.exe

2. Create a new log file

3. Scroll down to drive which contains the partition to copy > Proceed

4. Intel > Advanced > Scroll down to partition to recover

5. Use right arrow to get to Image Creation > Enter

6. Select where to store the image.dd file > Press Enter then press the Y key on keyboard.

7. File image.dd will contain the recovered partition.

You can use freeware such as OSFMount to mount image.dd files to access files inside them directly.

 

[blohin]

c627627 you saved me man, I was going crazy so I just left that computer running and went out to cool down. I came back home and saw your instructions and partition is back.

This might happen to others and if so they find this thread.

Thank you again man

 

[c627627]

Really!?

Wow that's great, man.


External 4TB drives go on sale often. $140 or so maybe. All irreplaceable data should reside both on their desktop as well as on the external drive which should be plugged into a power surge protector with an on/off switch, allowing you to switch it off and therefore have it physically inaccessible and protected when not in use to back up data.

Treat everything important on your computer as temporarily stored. Parts fail, especially mechanical hard drives. It is just a question of time before they reach their expected end of life.


As for your original problem, here's what I did for my dad: Got him a small SSD (they are cheap). Partitioned it into three partitions. First partition was Windows 7 or 8; second Windows XP, third was a partition for personal data and Program Files XP folder and Program Files 7 folder where I installed all large programs for the respective OS.

The reason for this is so that imaging/reimaging could be done faster. I then taught him how to image/reimage one OS from the other.



Because no personal files are kept on the OS partitions (I moved Desktop, Start Menu, Favorites etc.) folders away from OS partitions too... this makes nuking/reimaging possible in less time it takes for a short bathroom break.

My dad's computer is never slow because he nukes and reimages his OS just like I do: whenever there is the slightest hickup, the slightest fraction of a second delay in performance. It's actually quicker to reboot from one OS into another and reimage then it is to diagnose the smallest of problems.