Craig McPherson -- if you see this REPLY !!!!

[Dumb_terminal]

Craig, you have been actively posting and helping the users herre lately, Good effort.

Now onto my problem-- i have several OS on my 3 hard drives.

Windoze 98, Beos 5, Progeny & storm linux on one computer terminal.

Several Fat32 drives [ in a logical partition] containing MP3, nekkid Girls, Pr0n, pictures & my web development stuff are DELETED or suddenly lost & untraced.

i remembered how you Restored your documents in a post before since partition magic did not work for ya. -- Doing a search failed to bring it up.

So what is that Linux program/utility that u used to RESTORE missing Logical FAT 32 drives ??

:( i miss my MP#3 collection --> 1549 songs on those partitions

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help me out will ya ???

[Dumb_terminal]

i found out that GPART is the program...

After a long File searching the Archives :D

now off to recover my data. :eek: :D
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Backups Backups Backups

[Dumb_terminal]

Hello... ?? anyone seen this yet ? :mad:

i need to recover my lost data.. Please help!!!!

[ no i dont have any back up of it !!!!]
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In Storm linux

#su
#apt-get install gpart
---gpart installed---

Now What ?? :confused:

[Choozo]

Originally posted by Dumb_terminal:
<STRONG>
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In Storm linux

#su
#apt-get install gpart
---gpart installed---

Now What ?? :confused:</STRONG>


man gpart ?

[Craig McPherson]

Originally posted by Dumb_terminal:
<STRONG>Several Fat32 drives [ in a logical partition] containing MP3, nekkid Girls, Pr0n, pictures & my web development stuff are DELETED or suddenly lost & untraced.</STRONG>

Okay, when/how did this happen? How was the drive partitioned beforehand? Did the logical partitions simply vanish?

Did you, by any chance, have more than 4 logical partitions on the drive? If that's the case, you're in a dangerous situation if you also have Windows on the drive: Windows can only handle 4 logical partitions per disk, and if there are more than that, it will sometimes eat all of the logical partitions. It's nasty.


i remembered how you Restored your documents in a post before since partition magic did not work for ya. -- Doing a search failed to bring it up.

Well, that was quite a while ago, and I never tried using Partition Magic to fix it, but I doubt it would have helped. It was actually a botched installation of FreeBSD that nuked the partition table on the drive (it wrote the partition table that was supposed to go onto hard drive three onto the partition table of hard drive one).

So what is that Linux program/utility that u used to RESTORE missing Logical FAT 32 drives ??

The program I used to recover the partitions was gpart as somebody else already mentioned. However, while gpart is almost perfect at detecting/restoring primary partitions, there are other issues involved when dealing with logical partitions. Recovery can be more "iffy." I got all of mine back, but they were transformed into primary partitions in the process and some other weirdness happened. I didn't lose any data, but it look a lot of cleanup work to fix.

The first thing to do is don't touch anything. Don't use any fdisk or partitioning program on the disk until you're sure of what you want to do to try to recover. You might destroy your chances of a successful recovery if you do so. Even if your partition tables vanish, the data on your disk is still intact, so don't panic, and don't do anything until you're sure of what you want to do.

I read about gpart in a Maximum Linux article about partition table recovery. Maximum Linux's website is probably down now that they're out of business, but try looking for a Google cache, a friend's dead-tree copy of the magazine, anything. The article had a lot of programs other than gpart that might work better for you, so try to find a copy of it if you can. I'm sure several people on this board have copies of the issue and might be willing to scan you a copy of the article if you make another post about it.

Go ahead and try gpart out in trial mode -- let it detect partitions on the disk but not actually write the partition table. If it finds all partitions on the disk, go ahead and let it write the partition table. If not, do some more research before you commit to anything.

One final note. If you have a large enough blank hard drive or tape backup drive, you can back up the entire raw image of the disk, just in case your recovery efforts wind up destroying your data. If worst comes to worst, you can try to actually extract files from the raw disk image itself. This is tolerably easy with text files, but probably too much trouble to bother with for MP3s.

Good luck. Let me know how it goes.

[Craig McPherson]

Whoops. I should have read the rest of this thread. Looks like you've already found gpart.

Anyway, IIRC the "test mode" is pretty simple to use:

gpart /dev/hda

You really should read the man page, though. This is delicate work you're doing, and you should read the instructions for yourself instead of relying on somebody else. There are a few other options and switches you might want to try.

That'll show you the partitions it's detected on the drive and a possible partition table that it'll write onto the drive. If it looks good to you, tell gpart to actually write that partition table instead of just displaying it (the man page tells you how to do this). Make absolutely sure that's what you want to do.

If you're not sure what the partition table it generates means, post it here, along with a description of how your disk was partitioned before.

[Dumb_terminal]

1] &lt;Homer Simpson&gt; Dolt ~!

2] &lt;Homer Simpson&gt; Dolt ~! Again
For not reading the manpage!!!! ive really panic because all my pricious data suddenly gone missing ~!~! You guys must understand the feelings of a WORRIED man ~!~!

3] okay will set out to restore the partion all night long now :D thanks

By Craig: Windows can only handle 4 logical partitions per disk, and if there are more than that, it will sometimes eat all of the logical partitions. It's nasty.


To tell you the truth i had 8 Fat32 Drives altogether... C: D: E: F: G: H: I: J:
on the 2 hard drives.

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Don't mind me, im just a Dumb_Terminal http://www.sargessmilies.homestead.com/files/Smilies/Sarge/Headphones_anim.gif null

[Dumb_terminal]

An Update: So far so good...

2 partitions recovered, and data have been backed up. now left another 3 drives behind it to be restored.

*sigh* i wish there was an easier way, because converting the restored ones into primary partitons sucked ***.

Now i have to restore each drive, one by one.
http://ne.dsi.unimi.it/~vigna/PLL.jpg

[Dumb_terminal]

Everything is fine and totally restored...
back ups are done and the drives are being partitioned CLEAN again

to make sure nothing like this happens again. :D

http://www.npr.org/news/healthsci/antarctica/photos/penguin.interview.lb.jpg

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Penguins saved the day :D