Windows Did I delete my hard drive?

I was using partition magic 8.0, I deleted my 5 gig partition, C:. Everything was fine, so I resized E: (my only partition now, I have an 80 gig hard drive) to 80 gigs. I left .8mbs of room left unused. Anyway it tells me to resize it I need to restart my computer, so I press ok. My computer restarts and I get a black screen that says "Boot failure from previous device...
Boot Failure
Reboot and select proper boot device
or insert boot media in selected boot device
Press any key when ready.
********! I made sure that it was booting from my hard drive (I've got windows xp, just to let you know) and restarted, same thing. I reset the bios, same thing. I pulled out the CMOS battery, waited a few minutes, put it back in, same thing. I'm guessing because it can't boot from my hard drive that there is nothing to boot from on my hard drive, so does that mean that I deleted everything on it? Please help me!

 

Errr... yes.. youve repartitioned your drive... your old drive C is no more... it is effectively deleted. I suppose it may be recoverable by a specialist, of which there are many advertising in backs of PC magazines, but so far as you're concerned... yep... bye bye data.

It wouldn't susprise me if there is a way to recover the data, so long as it;s not been overwritten, but I'm damned if I know how.. I'm sure if it;s possible someone will correct me.

 

Thanks for you help, but I think you misunderstood. I had all my data, installed programs, all of that stuff on the E drive. I deleted the C drive and it was totally fine, but when I resized the E drive to 80 mbs that's when it happened.

 

What was on the C partition? The operating system? If so, you've just removed the partition that the boot loader is pointing to, so it'll obviously fail to start up properly.

If I'm understanding this correctly, you should still have all your data on the E partition left. Either install Windows onto another drive and boot off that (your data should still be on the old drive) or put your current drive in another computer to access the data.

 

Hmm, thanks hitman. Is there a way I can keep all my data on E without another hard drive or computer? I think you're right, maybe windows was installed onto E. I don't have the windows install disk yet, this is why I am asking, but can I just pop in the disk and install windows onto my existing hard drive (E)? Would everything return to normal after that, including installed programs, data, everything?

 

I guess it would be ok installing to your E: partition, I don't think the installer would delete anything but there again Ive only ever installed to blank drives
Your installed programs probably won't work as the registry will be new and they'll be expecting some system files to be on C: which doesnt exist. Other data should be fine.

 

If you've deleted C and enlarged E (on the same drive) where is/was D?

C drive was your boot partition, you've deleted it so no can boot. I'm guessing you've left an extended partition filling the full disk with a single logical drive in it containing whatever was on E. Logical drives can't boot, so you can't just reinstall Win to it AFAIK.

You should run PM from floppy, that will show you what you've got and also let you convert the extended partition to an active primary partition on which you can re-install Win. Done carefully, the data should be OK, but it's a lot safer on a DVD before you start stuff like that.

 

I don't have a floppy drive (that I can hook up to my computer) but I found some programs that will undelete partitions. I've haven't found one that works yet, I downloaded a pro version of partitition recovery but that didn't work. Can anyone reccomend a partiton recovery program that's free (or pirate-able) and that doesn't need floppys?

 

Yeah... Partition magic 8.0 doesn't actualy do anything at all untill after you reboot and the partition magic window opens durring windows boot up...


If your computer went to reboot after you hit "apply changes", but it failed right after POST, then start thinking about causes other then partition magic.

 

One thing I would suggest is to run a live version of Linux, backup all your data onto DVD or some other storage media, or network storage then reformat and reinstall the operating system.

You didn't seriously think that deleting C: woudln't cause any problems? You've deleted the OS bascially!

 

The Partition Recovery programs probably don't work because your C partition has been covered by the enlarged other one.

If you've access to another computer with XP SP2 and an NTFS file system, install your PM on it and make a WinPE boot CD with PM included. Then you can try to do what I suggested above.

And please don't ask for "pirateable" stuff.

 

You can re-install windows XP onto you new partition without losing all your files and stuff - however you will lose all your settings and you will have to re-install a lot of your programs before they work as normal. Just don't format the partition.

If you have another computer I highly recommend using GetDataBack NTFS to recover your old C: partition - you do have to pay for it but it's reasonably cheap and well worth it.

 

No, he can't!

His remaining partition is a logical drive inside an extended DOS partition. And as such, can't be made bootable without first converting it into a primary DOS partition (which PM can do without losing data).

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/structPartitions-c.html

 

Hi,

I suppose Active@ Undelete can help you if your data is lost it has some really great recover algorithms, so use it!
http://www.active-undelete.com/