Re: [TCLUG:18079] clobbered partition table

[Tim Neu <tim@tneu.visi.com>]

On Tue, 23 May 2000, David S. Cargo wrote:

> During the installfest, I managed to use Partition Magic 2.02 to clobber
> my partition table on my combined Windows 95 / Linux disk.
> 
> Looking at possible solutions, I checked with Ontrack; they are sure
> they could fix the problem, but it would cost.  (It might be worth it,
> but I'm looking at alternatives.)  I also called the Geek Squad, and they
> said they could recover data, but not necessarily Windows itself.
> 
> Linux has two programs that might allow a person to try to do this
> himself:  gpart and fixdisktable.
> 
> My question is, have you ever had this problem?  Did you try to cover
> it yourself?  What were the results?

If you have a printout of fdisk -l from prior to the "accident", you
can possibly recover by recreating the exact partition structure.  Unless
you've already overwritten the partition with new data, your files would
all still be there. 

The problem is, if you installed OVER the existing partition, your data is
likely to be erased by the filesystem creation (as part of the
installation procedure).  There's no easy way to recover, if the data has
already been overwritten

The only practical scenario where this would save you would be if you
deleted /dev/hda1, installing linux on /dev/hda2 (leaving the former hda1
as free space).  You could then recreate the partion entry for /dev/hda1
and your files would be intact.

Backups are your friend! 
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