Messed up my hard drive :(

dude...linux has its own built in partion tool when you install it, for future notice.

and, there are a lot of bootable disks you can download.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
check that out.

you could always use windows to boot up and enter repair mode.
type fixmbr
then reboot
see if that helps.

Found the problem. WINDOWS XP.

It sounds like you removed either:

1) Removed the Windows (NTFS probably) partition and created 3 empty unformatted partition. In this case you are screwed.

2) Resized the NTFS partition and created 2 unformatted partitions. In this case you Windows Boot Loader is probably confused and you should be able to recover with your Windows install CD.

its the truth though...
when i ran windows every day it seemed like there was something not working right.
ever since i got my imac. everything has been pure bliss.
:knocks on wood:

When you run partition magic it asks if you want to create a restore disk in case this happens...probably would have been a good idea!

Calvinatir said:

When you run partition magic it asks if you want to create a restore disk in case this happens...probably would have been a good idea!

Click to expand...

my exact thoughts...
i actually had this problem happen to me many a time.
i kept manually partitioning my hd to install linux and it
kept messing up each time. i never created a rescue disk either.

finally i booted the linux cd and it partitioned it for me.
then, i switched to mac.

Have you tried booting from your windows XP disk?

lisbakke said:

No. Do you mean go into the bootup and try to "repair" windows... or to resintall just the OS?

Or do you mean actually booting into windows from the disc (how do you do that)?

Click to expand...

I mean stick the cd and turn the computer on- if it's a relatively modern pc it should boot from the cd before it tries the hard disks. If it doesn't, you need to change your boot settings from the bios. Usually you do this by starting up and then pressing Delete or sometimes F1- it should tell you on the bios screen somewhere. Once you've booted into XP set up you should be able to get a detailed run down of what's happened to your disks.

lisbakke said:

Even if I could boot in, would it help? I had my HD attatched as slave to a bootable windows, and it recognizes the HD but it won't assign drive letters because they are "unknown partitions".

Click to expand...

What version of Windows is the bootable one you mention? If it's earlier than XP or 2k (ie. Win 98) then it won't recognise an NTFS-formatted drive and that's probably why it doesn't see your hard disk.

If this isn't the case and you think you should be able to read the drive, then I'm not sure what's happened. In theory you should be able to retrieve some if not all of your data from the partitioned disk if you take it to a specialist. I can't recommend anyone because I've never had to do it myself, but I've heard happy stories of data being recovered even from completely re-formatted disks, so it's worth making some enquiries.

I suppose it's possible that Partition magic formatted your drive in a Linux file system (I don't know much about Linux so not sure) and now Windows doesn't see it...