Restoring a partition after a failed PM8 resize/create

[Spud1]

Ok got a little problem here

My friend over in Germany has a PC with two hard drives, both 250gig IDE drives that are not raided. Originally he had just 1, 250gig partition on each disc, but this weekend he decided to install Windows Vista on his second hard drive. To do this he needed to resize the existing 250gig partition on his 2nd hard drive to 150gig, and then create a second, 100gig partition in the remining space (rough sizes ofc). He used partition magic 8 to do this, and not being a 'techie' so to speak he didn't realise that the one thing you just don't do with partition magic is queue things up - so he queued the resize followed by the create new partition.

Anyway Parititon magic started to make the changes and then just froze up and eventually decided to crash completely. The computer itself still works fine however, and windows didnt crash. So my friend didnt reboot the machine and just left it until he could talk to me

As a result of the crash, windows and partition magic cannot see any partitions on his second drive at all - not the old or the new. We dont know how far partition magic got - although I suspect it was part way through resizing when it crashed, messing up the old partition. So we're trying to get the whole partition back if its possible. We have already ran O&O format recovery, but it cannot recover all files, and a portion of those that it can (photos mainly) are unnamed..which makes things difficult.

If I could physically access the machine I would use something like Ultimate BootCD or Hirens BootCD and try the many partiton recovery tools on those CDs, but I dont have access to the machine and trying to guide my friends to do it over the phone will be very difficult considering the language and technical barriers.

So, does anyone have any reccomendations? Any software that you know of that can restore a partition, or any other diagnostic tools i can try? Or is it going to be a case of just restoring a portion of the disc? Hopefully tonight I will get remote access to his machine sorted out, so i can at least see what state its in with my own eyes Any suggestions/help from you guys will be VERY welcome tho.

Thanks in advance,

Spud/Pete

[Splash]

I have always sworn by Acronis Disk Director - http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...-recovery.html might be worth a whirl? There's a trial which I believe will show you what can be recovered but you would need to buy the software to actually do the recovery.

And you know what I'm going to say now don't you? Get some form of backup regime in place!

[Spud1]

hehe thanks for the link, i'll get him to give it a try and if it works he can buy it. BTW do you know if you need a second disk to restore to with this? Actually thats a pretty stupid question really but i'll ask it anyway just in case

And yes I know..but this isnt me or my machine remember I'm sure that from now on everything he has will be backed up though hehe

[Splash]

You will need another disc to recover the data to, yes.

[excalibur2]

Could you ask partition magic to start again? It might correct the fault...................I've used PM many times with queued instructions with no problems and have two hard drives, and it has never let me down, once I thought something wasn't working and rebooted but PM just carried on where it left off.