URGENT ASSISTANCE REQUIRED - Partition Failure

[A.T.O.B]

Hi All,

I have a laptop with a 40Gb (NTFS) hard disk running WinXP Pro. I run Partition Magic 7. I setup the following procedure.

1. Resize partition to 20Gb
2. Create a LinuxSwap partition of 256Mb
3. Create a Ext2 (3 wasn't avaliable) out of the remaining space.

I rebooted and it started the procedure in dos. Part of the way though it reported an error (112 i think) which was a bad sector. I press a key to restart and now all I get is the command prompt for me to select either "start windows normally", "safe mode" or "Last known good configuration". All of which cause the machine to restart and I am presented with the options again.

I have booted of my Knoppix CD and can still see my data on the harddisk. I am at work tomorrow and will try copying data though Knoppix to the server but I am not hopeful.

Can anyone please advice me on what I can do. Also, I really need an idiots guide on creating the partitions using Knoppix's partition program so that if the data is transferred I can build the partitions and dual boot Knoppix (2 partitions totaling 20Gb) and WinXP (the other 20Gb).

Please help!
Many Thanks
Chris

[rickenbacherus]

Just put this up about 15 minutes ago.

Hmmmmm- twice in one day I read about Partition magic borking a hard drive!?!? That's very interesting- and to think people actually PAY for that program. Thankfully qtparted is free!

[papasi]

I had a similar problem the first time I tried to use partition magic for my xp pro laptop and know of a couple of people too. its begining to sound like a pattern to me. This is what I did:

I first booted with a floppy disk with harddisk recovery program on it, then run a chdisk and found out that all my files are intact. From there, I tried booting from an xp pro cd and that got me to some form of system recovery program which requested for administrators password. Now this is the bizare part, I ditched the process and restarted my computer, then partition magic asked to proceed, I said no and got my computer life back.

I don't know if this will be helpful but I hope it can give you an idea where to start.
Best

[iconfly]

You could try gpart it is on knoppix. Open a terminal and type it in. A google search will find several pages of info. Should be worth a try. Jimmy

[A.T.O.B]

Papasi,

That sounds like the easiest way to go. I can boot of the Knoppix CD and see that all my files are still intact. I'm off to hunt for a XP cd now.

ATOB

p.s. Hard Drive size seems a little small though .... hmmmm

[A.T.O.B]

Just hard to repartition and format the drive. All my data lost

ATOB