curropt boot sector, Partition table lost

Welcome to TSF:

Here is a link to an outstanding (5 stars) PROVEN partition repiar prog / not free ~~ but the best if your data is critically important to you ~~ and you can scan your drive and it will tell you if the recovery will be forth coming or not !!
http://www.ptdd.com/

here is another / this one is free (2 stars) / this prog also has been reported to be a good one / although doesnt seem to be anywhere near an equal to the above
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm


another free one / havent heard as much feedback on this one yet / so if you choose please let us know
http://www.easeus.com/


As for the why's of the reoccurence of this problem / I am not sure could me many things like ~~ a quirky OS install / flaky partitioning etc
after you have recovered & backed-up your data I would strongly suggest you run the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility off their website to be sure the drive is healthy / then if it were me / I would use a drive eraser (zero fill pog / and do a clean install of the OS / two occurences of messed up partitions would remove all my trust from the existing OS install and drive me to a "fresh" start ~~ but thats just me - i have no patience for a flaky OS or machine

let us know how you progress / dont hesitate to ask more questions when needed

regards

joe

Wow, ok, thanks. So, can i be fairly certain that i'll get my files bak if i fork out for that recovery program? i'll probably try the free ones out first.
My slight worry is that when this happened b4, there was obviously some trace of the previous partition and its files left behind that my recovery program could recognise but not this time; i jst thought that this might mean something is very badly wrong.
And could you explain these two things a bit more detail for me pls:
1. What do you mean by flaky partitioning? (aborted partitioning tasks? random restarts? several types of file systems?)
2. What does a drive eraser do and whats a "zero fill pog"?
3. Could this be a problem with, say, my motherboard, or (a long shot) faulty memory or some other piece of hardware? cos this new drive occasionally made stupid helicopter noises like the old faulty drive that it replaced so maybe the motherboard or something is causing the same problem to happen again .. perhaps?

Thanks again I love you guys

Hello Mega:

Flaky partitioning / as I often describe is simply aborted partitioned attemots or deleting a partition but files, data, file fragments get left behind / then when you re-partition these framents and data instructions tend to have a confusing impact on the drive. I personally have mad a habit of insisting on single attempt partitioning & OS installs / if things dont go smooth or as plan I simply wipe the drive clean and start again / many times the fragments of data or partition boot table info will get messed up during multiple partition creating especially if your are trying to recreate the same size partition with the same logical drive assignments etc / it just turns to muddy waters ~~

drive eraser & zero fill program are the one in the same / people who are more "proper" with acutal program descriptions prefer to call the program a "zero fill program" the program actually writes zero's to every sector on the hard drive to write over any data that was previously there / also nicked "drive erasing" its called erasing because if you zero fill a drive there is NO way whatsoever to recover any data that was on the drive ~~ if thats not erasing ~~ I dont know what is ???? even the CIA isnt going to recover any data from a drive that has had a zero fill prgram run on it / as a result you are 100% assured no file fragments / no data instructions / no viruses / no old system files / partition table info etc is going to reside on that drive to screw up your next partition attempt or OS install

my favorite (free) drive eraser (zero fill prog if you prefer) is DBAN
http://dban.sourceforge.net/ >>>> download the floppy version\

I doubt its your motherboard that causing your problem / MANY things you cause the problem you are experiencing ~~ a poor PSU can do this by interupting the drives power ~~ too much computer heat can make a hard drive flaky / but I personally would back-up your data if possible / "clean" the drive -repartition the drive / "clean" install the OS again that would be my number one suspect / then go from there

if you want to test you memory download memtest86.com (free) let if run for a minmum of one hour to check your memory for errors
also download the hard drive diagnostic prog and test for drive for physical health ????
its going to be a bit of a task troubleshooting and methodically eliminating variables but there is alot of enjoyment and experience to be had solving your own computer dilemmas

dont hesitate to ask more questions if needed

regards

joe

hello again. jst thought i'd post this in case it's of any use to anyone else.
I tried most of the things linderman suggested. PTDD was brill it got my partitions and all the data on one of them bak but because i'd done something stupid with another recovery program before (Active @ partition recovery ... not very good, or at least not the wayi used it) the windows partition was empty O). So i tried using Data Recovery Wizard but didnt do much good since i didnt wanna buy it and the demo didnt actually recover anything. Then i found this other program, "Recover My Files" (i used version 2.90) and it's brill. it's recovered most of my files so far without any problems that i can think of. so if u can get it, use it. I also tried "active undelete" but that wasnt such a good program: it found the lost files but recovered them badly, with errors and curropt data and stuff.
neway, hopefully that was of some use.
Oh and no i've still not got everything working properly but i think i'm on my way