[ale] any easy way to recover deleted partitions and their contents from HD ?

[Greg Freemyer]

On Sun, 2004-04-18 at 10:45, Joe Knapka wrote:
> "James P. Kinney III" <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com> writes:
> 
> > On Sat, 2004-04-17 at 16:05, Courtney Thomas wrote:
> > > James,
> > > 
> > > Thank you again.
> > > 
> > > The partitions deleted were DOS FAT16. Can I use a linux emergency disk to try 
> > > to recover ? There were 4 partitions, all exactly 2008MB.
> > 
> > I would recommend a Linux emergency disk instead of a DOS floppy. 
> > 
> > The critical issue is whether or not data has been overwritten by the
> > partitioning process. 
> > Consider the bad ASCII art below:
> >                _____________________________
> > Original disk  |  1   |   2  |   3  |  4   |
> >                _____________________________
> > new partition1 |  1   |   2  |              
> >                _____________________________
> > new partition2 |  1   |   2                |
> >                _____________________________
> > new partition3 |      1     |      2       |
> > 
> > The difference between original and 1 is simply the deletion of the two
> > partition markers for partitions 3 and 4. This is recoverable (usually)
> > by remaking the partitions in the exact same spot as before. 
> > 
> > Version 2 requires the deletion of 2,3,4 and creation of a partition 2
> > that fills the disk. This is also most likely recoverable. Delete 2 and
> > recreate 2,3,4 in the original locations.
> > 
> > Version 3 is not good. Since new partition markers have been created,
> > this will have overwritten a small portion of the disk.
> 
> It's my belief that all the partition-location-and-size data is
> stored in the boot sector partition table, rather than as markers
> on the disk platter itself. If that's the case (and I could be
> wrong), then it should always be possible to recover by recreating
> the original partition table, *provided* nothing has been
> written to the disk since the partition table changed.
> 
> -- Joe

The main partition table holds exactly 4 entries.  If all the partitions
are primaries, then it is self contained.

If any of the partitions are extended, then there are sub-partition
tables at the start of the extended partitions.  ie. spread across the
disk.

Greg
-- 
Greg Freemyer