NTFS with ext2 superblock

[Onion Avenger]

Hello,

Somehow I accidently got an ext2fs superblock on an NTFS removable firewire drive. Partition Magic thinks it's now "Unformated", I can't mount it in linux as ext2 or ntfs (oddly, it says NTFS support is not in my kernel even though it's compiled - and loaded - as a module), and windows thinks it's unformatted.

Thankfully, R-Studio Demo sees that it has NTFS files, but an ext2 filesystem. I can't figure out how to change it so that it thinks it's an NTFS filesystem. The partition type is NTFS but it sees an ext2 superblock (and maybe more things).

PLEASE HELP!

How can I reverse this so windows can once again see my ntfs drive??

This is kind of urgent, so the sooner the replies, the better.

Thanks in advance,
--Richie, the Onion Avenger

[zhenlin]

You can't reverse an annihilated superblock or filesystem structures.

Sorry.

I suggest you try to recover the data by means of grep, hexdump and strings.

[Onion Avenger]

Thanks for the prompt reply, zhenlin.

I still have no idea how I got an ext2 superblock on an NTFS drive, but I was able to fix it!!!

Here's how in case anyone else gets a similar problem:

Boot up with your XP CD (I had to use a 2000 CD since I forgot the administrator's password ), then go into the recovery console. Once there, issuing a fixboot <drive letter> will fix it! I chkdsk'ed it to be sure it was ok. It looks like no data was lost! Hooray!

It was interesting because I've had partition problems before (on other disks) which are usually easily fixable, but never such a nerve-racking filesystem error like this!

Another important lesson (but not totally learned the hard way, thankfully) in the importance of backups!

Thanks and good luck to people with similar prediciments,
--Richie, the Onion Avenger