Topic: Secondary Hard Drive now "Unformatted or Damaged"

[Sir_Stabbalot]

So, I was apparently wrong in my assumption that when I told Debian 4.0 (a Linux distribution) to install on the 20 gigs of unpartitioned space I had for it, it wouldn't touch the other partition with a vast majority of all my stuff on it. At least, that's what Windows 2000 said happened when I popped in its install CD it see what went wrong. The drive still shows up as a disk in Windows, but it claims it isn't formatted. Doesn't list the capacity, either. Linux's install partition is absent,as I think it uses a different file system.

Now, I still have my 40-gig C-drive, but all my games and most of my other files were on the larger one. Do you know of ANY way to repair a drive without reformatting? Because, you know, I REALLY need it. Desperately. Like, I've got several months worth of work in Photoshop and 3DS Max on there that I don't want to disappear.

[Shift Key]

This is why people should backup before installing new operating system. Unless you are careful, strange things happen. Like data loss.

My guess is that you selected the wrong partition to install Debian on. Windows and Linux interpret the partitions differently.

For example, the primary hard drive on an IDE cable these days is referred to as sda. The first partition is called sda1. The second partition (if it exists) is called sda2.
The second hard drive in a system is referred to as sdb. Same thing as above.

My advice is to learn how things are wired up in your system and remove drives that contain stuff you cannot afford to lose before you go tinkering with new operating systems. There are several distributions that are geared towards people which are not as experienced with Linux (Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS). I wouldn't say Debian is among those - I installed the 64-bit version of Debian after playing around with other versions of Linux (Mandrake, SUSE, Fedora, Gentoo, Arch) and it still has its own quirks - like the installer.

Good luck on getting your stuff back, but by the sound of it I don't think it'll come back easily.

[Sir_Stabbalot]

Alright, I managed to find a boot CD with some hard drive diagnostics on it. Hopefullly I'll soon get a better idea what damage I did.

Actually, I did backup a lot of my files beforehand. Unfortunately, it was on the same disk that's now broken. Am I stupid or what?  

[Shift Key]

Quote
Originally posted by: Sir_Stabbalot
Am I stupid or what?

Well it has to be "stupid" then because the alternative is just incorrect.

EDIT: I'm too witty for my own posts sometimes.

 

[Sir_Stabbalot]

Indeed.

Also, I found a program that can scan corrupted drives, and the data is still there. Now I just need to find a free version.

[Shift Key]

Quote
Originally posted by: Sir_Stabbalot
Now I just need to find a free version.

loltorrentlol

Wow, i'm just talking cryptic nonsense these days. I should see a doctor or something.

[Ceric]

Yeah.  Like I'm sure something like the Forensic Toolkit could retrieve all your data even though thats not is real use.  So I'm sure their is a consumer utility that would do the same for cheaper or not require a dongle.

[Sir_Stabbalot]

Well, I stumbled upon a small program called TestDisk. It manage to repair the partition table. All my data is still there, and all my programs work. COMMENCE VICTORY DANCE!