deleted partion on my pc, need help...(solved)

[Denverlatino]

Hey thanks for reading, I'm hoping that maybe someone in the past had the same problem I'm having and hope someone can help.
here what happen, i was using partition magic to make an extra partition on my PC to install xubuntu, did everything partition magic told me to do , reboot the PC and suddenly the PC told me it couldn't find the OS, i tried to use xp CD to run automatic recovery and that didn't work either, its tell in me that there are no correct paths, the try to install xp on the drive but once i get to to the point where i have to chose a partition , i see that the partition is raw,so i have to format my hd to install xp, the thing is that besides all my Roms and music what it matters the most is some pictures that i have there that don't have a backup, i go ogle a bit and found this http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1139&page=8
 i haven't tried because I'm running internet from the live version of xubuntu, so i cant really download or install anything.
That's why i was wondering if someone had a similar situation that can help me recover at least just my wife pictures.
Thanks in advance for any help.

[jonnyv]

I have no experience with that TestDisk program, but it looks like you could use it. But, one thing that I would recommend is to NOT make anymore modifications to the hard drive. Here are a few ideas.

1. If the pictures are that important to you, ask a local computer repair shop (don't go to Best Buy's geek $quad) to ghost the drive so that you have an exact backup in case anything you do messes it up. Don't know if it will help, but it can't hurt.

2. Purchase an external HD enclosure and throw the drive in there and bring it to a friend's house and mess with your TestDisk program.

3. If you have no available friends. Purchase (or find) a secondary hard drive. It doesn't have to be anything big, maybe an old 2 gig drive. Remove your original drive, put in this secondary drive and install XP on that drive. Then, hook up the original drive as a slave or 2nd hard drive (or HD enclosure). See if windows will see it. Probably not if it is a being recognized as a RAW drive. Then mess with your TestDisk program.

4. You can try to do a fixmbr on the hard disk. As a last resort. Sometimes this works.
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx?mfr=true

Good Luck.

[BobA]

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

Might be what you are looking for.  Have not tried it myself.  There are also selfbooting linux disks with utils on them but you will have to download them from wherever they are hosted or torrents.

[Space Fractal]

You might need a commercial recovery application to copy "unknown" partition back again to a another drive. That is what I was need for a friend.

Like Some of These:
http://www.r-studio.com
http://www.quetek.com (File Scavenger)

They costs, but should been able to get your data back again, even it take some time to scan the whole harddrive. Just make sure you diddent do anything after the data lost (to make sure it diddent overwrite other thing).

[XyloSesame]

I've had good luck in forensics recovery with PE rescue disks (BartPE), Winternals ERD (Bought and killed by MS - older versions can still be found), and Executive Software Undelete. They're not free, though...

[Denverlatino]

found a xbox hd and installed xp on it , this way i have my pc back online, now i might try the options provided by all of you guys, thanks.... ill post my results

[Denverlatino]

wow  this tool http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1139&page=8 it really does what it says, i fix my hd in a snap , and recover all of my info,
my advice to someone Else, if you delete your partition by accident and don't wanna loose your data or have an inaccessible hd you want to use, i will 100% recommend this tool , easy to use. thanks to the developers of this tool...

[BobA]

Nice to know that Testdisk works as well as they say it does.  Will keep it in my toolkit for sure.