[Pc_Support] File Recovery Windows 2000

[BBBB]

> BBBB wrote:
>
> >While saving an email as a file, my PC locked up hard. I had to hit the
> >reset switch to restart.
> >When the PC booted up I had lost a drive partition. The drive letter
still
> >shows up in windows and knoppix but as
> >unformatted. There are about 8 gigs of data that I would like to recover.
> >Partition Magic also reports
> >this as unformatted. This is the first 8 gigs of a 30 gig drive.The rest
of
> >the drive seems to be working fine.
> >I believe it was formatted fat32.
> >  I think this may be a good candidate for a file recovery tool.
> >Can someone reccomend a good program for this?
> >
> >Thanks,
> >Bradley
> >
> FAT32 has done that to me, too.  Closed source, so I never did find out
> what command was exercised by the virus that did it!
>
> My "solution" was to install Knoppix on the "non-existant" partition,
> simply accepting that the data was lost forever.  Luckily, I had copied
> most of the important stuff to another drive on my network, and on my
> system.
>
> BUT!  For a last desperate attempt to read that partition, did you try
> to mount it in Knoppix?  If it doesn't show up, the FAT is corrupted for
> that drive.  Perhaps there is a FAT recovery tool?  Ther are two FAT
> files, though Partition Magic seems to follow the M$ pattern to ONLY
> read the first FAT, and to try to restore from the first FAT, using the
> second FAT only to compare and report when the first FAT is bad.
>
> A good system tool would read the second FAT, to permit some recovery.
>
> I will bet someone else has a better answer.  But, I have switched to
> using reiserFS in Linux. and saving anything on my network that was in a
> FAT or FAT32 partition, there.  BTW, AVG is free, and found four trojan
> viruses on one FAT drive today, on a kid gaming XP Pro system on my
> network.
>
> I'll be watching for answers, cuz that problem of the disappearing
> partition in FAT and FAT32 is a really bad thing!
>
Knoppix live CD didn't read the partition either. I will try the suggested
programs and see what happens.
I doubt I will get a chance before Friday.

Thanks to all who responded.

Bradley