obviously it's a little bit late, but anyways,
working on a client's machine today, sector 0 decided to go bad, so i've had to do some ntfs research etc.
anyways, ntfs.com has some interesting information, and linked to a program for money that actually works some magic:
http://www.partition-recovery.com/ pr.exe.
the demo will scan for lost partitions, but you need the paid version for it to write the "guessed" tables to the drive.
so, this drive is from a dell win2k box, with a 30-odd MB fat12 "dell diagnostics" partition, and the rest an ntfs partition. sector 0 either failed or just barfed (i think it barfed, but anyways...) after a load of stuff done (never ever ever do anything at a 1/4 to 5 on a friday....) to it (updates, etc).
so, the maxtor diag saw an error and actually "fixed it" (nervous, nervous), but the partitions were on vacation. ghost crashed when i tried to get it to even _peek_ at the drive. not fun.
anyways, this pr.exe app scanned the drive, saw the fat and the ntfs partiton lickedy split. apparently you can also use it, or parts of it or the company's other software (they own like 57million domains, linked through/in/out of the ntfs.com domain [cheezy yes, and normally i'd write them off for it, but it worked so...] with a name for each of their packages, at least i think they're all theirs.), from dos to mount ntfs partitions under dos and win9x etc, which is wicked cool in and of itself and something i'll mess with later.
anyways, so i bought the full version, it wrote out the partitons and blammo the data is still intact in those partitions.
so, it is cool in and of itself for that.
also, supposedly it will rewrite MBR's. this didnt' work, either because of the stupid Dell fat12 "diagnostic" partition being in the way, or it being win2k or whatnot.
so, anwyays, it's a cool app.
Author
