File Recovery Tools / LiveCD recommnedations

PDD

Hi Folks,

I defragged my WinXP machine there the other day as part of my semi-regular maintenance however it seems to have Borked my machine. The defrag finished fine and when I went to restart my machine next it just wouldnt boot.

I put in a Ubuntu Live CD and GParted was able to see the HDD but none of the partitions on it. It just showed the drive and listed the type of File System as unknown. This has me a little concerned as Ive always been able to use a LiveCD to rescue files before. I think there might be something wrong with the MBR

Rescuing the Windows installation isn't a priority just recovery of files from the HDD's partitions. I was wondering if anyone can suggest tools that might be able to recover the files, I know there are some Linux LiveCD's out there that can do this but I definately don't know enough about Linux to use them properly. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

Dave

BopNiblets

I'd try fix it with the XP CD first, maybe run a CHKDSK on it.

FIXMBR or FIXBOOT maybe, haven't done it that often...

Johnboy1951

The Linux tools I would use (if the Win CD fails) are
testdisk ...... which should be able to recover the partitions and write the partition table anew.

Also there is
photorec
which is a part of the same package and is used for file recovery if necessary.

I suggest testdisk to try to recover your partition arrangement which should set everything up right again.

Most live CDs will have this tool, but there are speciality distros for this type of thing if you wish to go that route ....... check out
www.distrowatch.com
They have a means to get a list of Recovery/Forensic distros for you to choose from.

regards.

Capt'n Midnight

if the drive is fubared then you can try ddrescue to grab an image of it and try to mount as a loop later on

Mean-Machine

how about Ubuntu Rescue Remix?
http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/