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Thread ID: 35412	2003-07-11 17:01:00	Partition magic made my partition disappear	piejar (4208)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
159010	2003-07-11 17:01:00	Something went wrong while I was merging a 6Gb NTFS patition with the 50Gb NTFS primary partition it had originally come from . . . (PM had frozen and I had to reboot half way thru the process . . . yikes) . Now there is 6Gb of space missing on the disk that doesn't even show up as unallocated space . . . The Bios, PM and Sisoft Sandra all report the full drive size but report nevertheless the available space as being 6Gb short of what it ought to be . . . XP and CHKDSK, unfortunately only see the "reduced size" . PM (from XP or from Rescue floppy) doens't see anything wrong and everything works otherwise . . . . It looks like the FAT is confused as to where the last sector of the disk is . . . . Does anyone know of a way to "fix" this . . . a utility . . . a non destructive formating . . . whatever . . . ?? Any help would be appreciated . Pierre	piejar (4208)
159011	2003-07-11 22:52:00	Had a similar problem when I mistakenly made a new partition "hidden". Not in the same manner as you, but might pay to run PM and make sure. You can un-hide it again. Bye	Peter H (220)
159012	2003-07-11 23:41:00	I agree in some contexts in that it sounds like the Self defining structure such as FAT or NTFS Allocation tables may be damaged. If your keen to get the data back I would suggest tools like easy recovery professional [Payware] or PC Inspector [Freeware]. There is two options I can see directly you may want to consider. 1] Searching for the missing partition and try and rebuild it / rebuiling the part merge partition 2] Searching the Hard disk as a whole outside of the structure then backing up what files you want to another drive Remember neither of these produce guaranteed results	Captive (3159)
159013	2003-07-12 11:58:00	Are you absolutely sure PMagic had frozen and you had to reboot?? Usually when performing heavy tasks, PM freezes the mouse etc, and won't move for 30secs+ Its best to just leave it. If the progress hasn't increased in one hour - then its frozen. Very bad idea to reboot machine when pmagic is running :| Perhaps you could try a recovery with partition magic, I know that you can undo your changes or whatever with their recovery disks. Have you tried say a scandisk etc on the drive? Norton scandisk might do it if u have that.	PoWa (203)
159014	2003-07-12 12:26:00	Take too long to explain and implement. Two options: 1. repartition and reinstall, or 2. restore the backup boot sectors (costs either time or dollars)	Merlin (503)
159015	2003-07-12 21:39:00	Thanks for replies so far.... ....I agree in retrospect, it might not have been permanently frozen....I should have waited even longer...I was running PM from the rescue disk at the time...I've been told that's usually safer... ....There is no "undo" as far as I can see... ....There is no "data" I need to recover as such, just my lost space... I wish I had Norton to try....or that "Spinrite" worked on NTFS...the problem is that nothing I've tried even declares that there's something wrong when the basic addition of used space vs available space is 6Gb short....(I can look at two "Sandra" reports, before ALL THIS and after and see it). I think that "Winhex" can modify the Partition table directly but the demo can't "save" and it's not cheap... What is out there that has got the "know how" to alter partition tables directly? Pierre	piejar (4208)
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