Partition Magic 7.0 : lost a partition and can't recover it !!!!

**Metalized Blood** · October 6th, 2003, 11:31 PM

Damn.

I had three partitions C:, D:, E:. I tried to merge D and E partitions and PM froze while merging the partitions.

Then I reset the computer and got into Windows. When I open Partition Magic it says :

Your system appears to have lost power during a partition operation. The partition was marked with recoverable partition indicator, so your system cannot acces it and cause corruption. The partition and all of its data can be safely recovered. Would you like to recover the partition now ?

When I press yes, PM starts recovering the partition and (according to Windows Task Manager) freezes !

Is there anything to do with this, I had lot of important stuff on that partition .... ?

**VHockey86** · October 6th, 2003, 11:36 PM

How long did you let it run after it said it was frozen?
Ive found sometimes if a program is busy enough it will just appear not responidng but if u let it do its thing it'll work. Do you see alot of activity (such as the HDD activity light on constant)? or is it totaly dead.
If it appears to be working id just let it go for awhile, couldnt hurt

**Mntsnow** · October 7th, 2003, 10:57 AM

Yep....call PowerQuest

**shahani** · October 7th, 2003, 11:03 AM

Firstly, how could you use PM on a drive with important stuff on it? PM cautions you to back up first.

Well, can't squeeze toothpaste back. As Mike suggests, see if PowerQuest can help, though it may cost you something.

**Chuckiechan** · October 7th, 2003, 11:15 AM

Have you tried your PM rescues disks? Best bet are the ones you made prior to partitining. If you don't have those, you can still make a set from another computer if you need to. It's in DOS, so you have to be really careful...

Basically, the rescue disks made pre-partition have a copy of the information needed to put Humptey-Dumpty back together again.

Another thing to try: get a larger Hdd and do a clone. Be sure to clone each partition. I think you ran out of HDD space on your original. When it's fixed clone it back to your original.

Or pull data off onto a CD and then delete it. Dump some programs you don't need or can re installed from disk. Getta make some space.

Good luck...

**Metalized Blood** · October 7th, 2003, 01:05 PM

The problem is that the OS (WinXP) doesn't even see the partition that I am having problems with.

I ran PM for all night yesterday and it recovered the partition (PqRP Partition) to a Xenix BBT. How do I make a valid, FAT32 one out of Xenix BBT ? BBT - Bad Block Table.

Now I can see that partition in PM, but not in Windows. When I try to activate it from DOS using fdisk, the Windows partition (c

gets desactivated ...

I will try the rescue discs then too.

**Chuckiechan** · October 10th, 2003, 11:42 AM

From my help file:

PqRP Partitions

"If your computer fails during a PartitionMagic operation, you may see a partition that displays as PqRP or PQFLEX in the partition list in the main screen. PartitionMagic flags a partition with a PqRP file system and a PQFLEX label, so you know that the partition has been modified. You should assume that a PqRP partition is not stable. Contact PowerQuest technical support for help in recovering data from a PqRP partition.

Copyright © 1994-2002 PowerQuest Corporation. All rights reserved."

You may want to go to thier site and look for info. It sounds like you aren't totally shafted (yet

)! Don't give up!

**TM12** · October 11th, 2003, 04:54 AM

You might also try booting with a Win98/ME start-up disk and using Norton Disk Doctor from the Norton Utilities or Systemworks cd. After the start-up completes, change to the cd drive and then cd\nu to the Norton Utilities folder. Then run ndd and follow the instructions. It's saved my butt many of times, especially with Linux, hopefully it'll help.

**Oryx** · November 13th, 2003, 10:40 PM

Hey, Metalized Blood, I have the same problem, and can't find a way to fix it yet. So if you find out, please post it !

**bouncingmolar** · October 15th, 2005, 02:53 AM

HEY, sorry for digging up an old thread, but its for the greater good

I had the same problem and i googled millions of forums none with solutions and this is one of those threads i looked at which didn't have a solution, so i figure other googlers might also dig up this thread when they have the same problem.

short story:
resizing partitions using PQ Partition Magic 8.0
Lighting hits

reset computer lost access to partition
Partition magic desplays drive as a Pqrp partition and i have lost me stuff.

Solution.... (dunno if u need the first step but in my blundering blind experimentation in order to discover the solution this is what i did)

1. I went to dos and loaded PTedit (powerquest PM Dos folder)

- changed the crashed partition to Fat32 file system again (the original file system that it was
-reset

2. Important step: used "GETDATABACK 2.31" to search disk for fat32 file system and recovered to my spare HDD. YAY...

If you can't get getdataback, then you might have some luck with All in One Top 5 Data Recovery Apps (5-in-1)

I hope this helps someone

**terrytree** · March 22nd, 2006, 03:35 AM

you can also try partition table doctor to recover deleted or lost partition.
please try demo version: http://www.ptdd.com

**webmasterpdx** · March 15th, 2012, 11:01 AM

The last solution is what I'm having to do. I have the UBCD4Windows (Ultimate Boot CD). It is free and well worth it, includes partition magic and many many other tools, including getdataback for fat and for NTFS.

I'm currently using getdataback for NTFS. My partition is 500G so it's big and takes a LONG LONG time, but it worked. I got all the important directories back. I wish it would give me an option to just restore them to the lost partition, but it does allow me to copy them to another disk partition I'm doing that and if I cannot recover the partition any other way, at least I'll have the most important files and can clear the disk and move them back there.

You cannot always back up a drive before using partition magic. In my case, my partition was bigger than any disk I had. It was my backup drive (which is why it's so important). I never had a problem with partition magic before, so I had this drive where for some reason It created 2 partitions. One was tiny and the rest of the drive went into the main partition (I'm not sure why the small one had to be created). Well I decided to eliminate this small partition and just have one, and it hung in the middle of this act and I had to exit (I had left it for an hour in case it was just a speed issue). Then, I couldn't access this drive. It wasn't seen by explorer even....it's as if the file system disappeared.

-D