PartitionMagic 8.0 Ate My Drive :(

OK, I have two windows installations, on two different harddrives.

The newest, is Windows 7 ultimate, fully updated.

And then I've got an ancient Windows XP that I didn't bother to do much with until Sims 3 started crashing on Windows 7. Anyway, I've been using XP a lot, to play that game.

One day I decided I didn't really like the partitioning I'd done to the XP drive. So, I thought I'd try to merge them with PartitionMagic 8.0 (which was already installed).

So, I ran it and it discovered problems to "Disk 3". I didn't actually know what disk it was referring to, but I assumed it was the third partition of the XP disk. These were automatic corrections that I just had to say yes to. I did, and it went ahead and made 4 corrections.

Only, it'd gone ahead and played with the Windows 7 harddrive, making it unbootable. I'm writing this from Windows XP, which still works (because I didn't go through with the partition merging, since I saw what it'd just done. In PartitionMagic, it views the Windows 7 disk as bad.

But I can still access that drive from Windows XP. I can see all the files still there, and I can access them, reading and writing. The only thing I can't do is look at my documents folder of that drive.

When I try to boot to Windows 7, it detects there's a problem and tries to find a solution. But it comes back saying it's unable to fix it. When I look at the details, it's saying the Boot Manager is missing or corrupt.

OK, so is there any way to correct things other than to format the drive and reinstall Windows?

It'd be great if there were an application that I could run from XP to analyze/fix the structure of the Windows 7 disk.

I haven't yet imaged that disk, so I'd like something that won't erase any/all data on there. Most of the stuff on there is duplicated on this disk, but there are some newer things, and things in the documents folder that I wouldn't like to see vanish.

OK... so anyone got a solution? Sorry for the long post. But I guess this is everything. I can provide more detail if that helps.

PartitionMagic is not compatible with Windows 7.

Partition Wizard is a free partition manager that seems to play well with Windows 7.

Good advice before using any manager of this type is to backup everything first!
By their very nature they are powerful applications.

Here's a link to Partition Wizard: Magic Server Partition Manager Software - Resize partition for Windows Server 2003, 2008 and 2000.

Hope this helps! And Welcome to SF!

OK, thanks for the advice. :)

The Windows 7 drive currently has 347 GB on it. I don't currently have that much space to store and image that large. Most of my space is on the Windows 7 drive.

What's a good option to back up this drive? I've heard imaging a disk is good, but I've never done it, and I think it'll create a 357 GB image, yes? So... how do you store that?

357GB/4GB DVDs= 90; that's a huge number of discs to be sitting there feeding into your computer- not to mention a huge amount of time!

If you're going to be backing up that amount of data you might consider getting yourself an external drive- say a TeraByte or 2.

You can get Macrium Reflect for your imaging software- it's free. Here's the link: Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

I have lots of partitions set up; one for pictures, another for program data, another for music- you get the idea.
Anyway, none of these partitions ever take more than a couple of DVDs for backups so it's pretty easy to maintain. Plus the advantage is that it makes organizing your software, programs, and data that much easier. Better still is that it keeps your Operating System on it's own drive. I like that type of setup.

I have the computer do a daily backup to an external hard drive.
I do a weekly backup onto DVDs.
And a monthly backup for off-site storage in case of an unthinkable disaster like a fire.

Your system needs to be determined based on how you use your computer- there is no right or wrong way. It's up to you how much protection you think you need.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

Others on this forum may have better ideas on a good approach than I...

Thanks Rap, you've been a great help.

I'll probably get another harddrive and back things up first. Then I'll have a play with recovering the drive.

If it turns out that I end up with a formatted disk, is there a neat way to access the stuff from My Documents from the image file I made? I've explored with Windows 7, and it has options to take control over folders like that, but I've never actually tried it. Does it work?

Anyway, I'll hang back until I've made an image. Thanks again.

Edit: Whoops, I just discovered that my documents are stored in Users directory!! I thought they were all stored under Documents and Settings, and inaccessible.

So... backing up my essential data will be pretty easy. Thanks.

Glad I was able to give you some ideas!

There are a lot of free Recovery Tools on the Internet- Google is your friend :)