[Solved] Re-writing MBR of non OS partition??

[KyleKL]

Hi everyone.

I'm in a bit of a situation (or situations) so I thought I'd sign up here for a little help.

My setup:

2 internal sata drives

250GB Western Digital:
1st partition = Windows XP
2nd partition = Storage

250GB Western Digital
1st partition ext2 boot
2nd partition swap
3rd partition reiser /

I've just installed gentoo for about my 3rd time and I had a few problems with dual booting. Long story short I thought my bios had confused grub (or me) as to which hard drive was which.
My last attempt at booting was to install grub to my windows mbr again by typing "setup (hd0,1)".... but obviously thats wrong, (it was 2am).

So I've just written grub to my storage partition and now when i boot into windows my storage partition appears as "Local Disk (F" and is unaccesable (says partition type is RAW)..

how can I fix this?? Theres allot of files on there that I need. Normally I would just do a fixboot or fixmbr but since there is no OS im stumped. I realise my files are still there, maybe if i just ghost it to another drive?

[shaman200]

hello,

In my opinion theres 2 ways:
Try to boot on your Linux disk (change settings in your bios).
Install grub on your /boot and set it ( try to find your windows disk,it should be should be /dev/sd??).

OR

keep booting on your windows disk
install a boot manager on your windows XP partition not your storage one!!!!

Concerning, your storage partition,well, your data are still there and you need to repair the partition table of the storage partition.

Why don't you try this => http://www.partition-recovery.com/download.htm
I don't know this one, but i'm pretty sure that's the kind of software you need!

Good luck!
_________________
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.

[krinn]

boot under linux. fdisk -l /dev/(your first disk with windows & storage partition) check if "storage" status is still ntfs, win32... the type it was before and not linux (83)

put the result there if you're in doubt

[KyleKL]

Hi guys, thanks for the reply's. Didn't get back sooner as i've been busy at work (fixing other peoples computers). Shaman you were on the right track, i booted using Ultimate Boot CD for Windows, a common tool at work.. There's a hard drive tool within it called "Test Disk" which finds all the partitions etc. I analized, re-wrote the partition table (didnt fix it) then i copied the backup boot sector over the current boot sector (i didnt even realise there was a backup) and it worked like a charm.

Thanks for the help, and theres another grub solution to write down..
If your too dumb/tired/drunk to install grub, "Test Disk" will help you out

[cyrillic]