partition magic is sh**

izzy007

izzy007

Big Geek
i used partition magic to merge two partitions and there was an error so when the computer restarted, the partition was merged but the partition it was merged to WAS ALL ERASED. EVERYTHING WAS GONE. i had to format it and pluz everytime i load sumthing up, the computer uses 100% of the cpu for about 4-5 seconds and then the files opens and im unable to do anything else.
 
aww shucks :P

A format doesnt erase the files that are on the disk.... it just removes the from the Master File Table.... You will be able to recover them (if you didnt have backups, which are always a good idear...).

[ot]
PS as you will most likely use a LiveCD to recover your files... why not stop using partition magic and windows :P ubuntu 6.06 is quite nice... and you can use "easyubuntu" or "automate" to install graphics card drivers and any media codecs/plugins you need... go on :P
[/ot]
 
I had the same problem with PM 8.0. 7 was fine for me, somehow 8 is screwed.

You should try Paragon partition manager, its never failed me.
 
Ive had a few problems with partition magic. Ive lost data, killed partitions, allsorts. Ive got PM8 too.

Like Addis said, Paragon partition manager is better. Ive found it far more reliable than PM. Never let me down either.
 
Impotence said:
aww shucks :P

A format doesnt erase the files that are on the disk.... it just removes the from the Master File Table.... You will be able to recover them (if you didnt have backups, which are always a good idear...).

[ot]
PS as you will most likely use a LiveCD to recover your files... why not stop using partition magic and windows :P ubuntu 6.06 is quite nice... and you can use "easyubuntu" or "automate" to install graphics card drivers and any media codecs/plugins you need... go on :P
[/ot]
Click to expand...

i cudnt access the drive without formatting it, and a format comletely ERASES the partition and write nill values to sectors. but i had the data on my old drive which i removed yesterday to install my brand new wd 2500ks with 16mb cache. its really fast and before with my old drive, it used to take 20.30 seconds to come out of hibernation but with this, it only takes like 3-5 seconds!
 
izzy007 said:
i cudnt access the drive without formatting it, and a format comletely ERASES the partition and write nill values to sectors. but i had the data on my old drive which i removed yesterday to install my brand new wd 2500ks with 16mb cache. its really fast and before with my old drive, it used to take 20.30 seconds to come out of hibernation but with this, it only takes like 3-5 seconds!
Click to expand...
If thats the case then why are there products which allow you to recover files from formatted partitions? There are different types of formats, low level & high level...
 
Are zero fills recoverable? I doubt you have done a zero fill anyway.

I was under the impression the term "low level format" doesnt apply anymore and when a hard drive manufacturuer supplies a "low level format" tool it was really a zero fill tool.

I have had micro-scope for yonk which apparently (according to a decent textbook from 1998) has a low level format tool. Ill have to give it a try.


Its only PM8 which has spannered up for me. My latest problem was resizing a partition. It does the business upon startup of windows and so hasn't got any user programs running yet. I dont remember the other PM version I had but to be honest that did seem ok.
 
izzy007 said:
i cudnt access the drive without formatting it, and a format comletely ERASES the partition and write nill values to sectors. but i had the data on my old drive which i removed yesterday to install my brand new wd 2500ks with 16mb cache. its really fast and before with my old drive, it used to take 20.30 seconds to come out of hibernation but with this, it only takes like 3-5 seconds!
Click to expand...

well i personally use Acronis PartitionXpert 2k3 - but PartitionXpert 2k3 has being replaced by Disk Director and for the same price as PM (for dowload) is excellent

P.S. you can also very easily burn a bootable CD, and do partition management just after POST
 
If thats the case then why are there products which allow you to recover files from formatted partitions? There are different types of formats, low level & high level...
Click to expand...

ive tried using pc inspector file recovery before after a format but no files were found. i had this data on a different hard drive anyway so i got it back.
 
Impotence said:
aww shucks :P

A format doesnt erase the files that are on the disk.... it just removes the from the Master File Table.... You will be able to recover them (if you didnt have backups, which are always a good idear...).
Click to expand...


Hey, you said it does not erase all data, so all the data i have ever had on my hdd since i first used my hdd is still on there?!?!?!
 
Untill it gets overwritten I believe so, yeah. A format just makes the data overwritable. Hence my question earlier about zero fills.

A low-level format would have deleted everything but I dont know if this is even possible anymore. I dont think the hard drives of today support it.

Also logical partitions are the easy ones to recover, thats why you might not be able to recover data from a hard drive partitioned with a primary partition.
 
ah, someone told me once that say is someone got there computer took away by police or somthing, they could tell everything you have ever had on your HDD, so say if you formated you hdd, they still would know whats been on it, even if all that stuff was over writen, is this true?
 
If you have an 80gb full of data and then format it and only re-use 20gb of data upto 60gb of the original data could possibly be recovered, yeah.

When you format its doesnt so much erase the data, it just marks the space where the data is as "for the bin" but it wont bin it untill it needs too.

Thats not to say every file is totally recoverable, some may have bit missing makeing it corrupt.
 
yeah i've used Rstudio to recover files plenty of times. Hell just last semester my senior thesis was lost when i formatted my hard drive. I thought i had backed it up but apparantly didn't. I used R-tools and it was still there. Just make sure you don't recover something to the same drive it was deleted from, cuz that runs the risk of overwriting it.
 
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