How to get my data back...

[Apex]

Well i gone to upgrade my hdd from a 80gb to a 200gb hdd and guess what norton ghost has done...yup thats right it's nuked the partion information on the 80gb hdd and so now it does not boot

so my question is where do i go from here.

is it a case of install xp to a new hdd and installing some data recover sw to it and then recover the partions to some free space then start afresh on the new hdd just to be safe ?

or is there a quicker way of getting my data back :s

[BenW]

Not totally sure if this is the answer you're looking for but could be worth a try

Put windows on new disk, put the old disk as secondary disk. Now start windows off new drive and just copy the data over from the old drive?

[Apex]

erm sounds easy, but the partion info is f*cked so windows will see nothing :/

ermmmm

[rajagra]

Level with us, did you Ghost from the new drive to the old one?
Anyone who's used Ghost has come close to doing it at some point. I've seen it happen a couple of times. Very embarassing, but these things do happen.

If so, data recovery will be difficult and expensive by a specialist firm.

But if it is just the partition data that's lost there will be easier ways to recover the data.

Has the partition info actually gone, or is the partition simply not active, or not bootable?

Something as simple as FDISK /MBR to restore the master boot record might get you up and running, or using FDISK to make the partition active. But work out what the problem is before you wildly try things out to fix it.

At the risk of rubbing salt into the wound, you should use Ghost to back up your drive before trying anything out. It can do a dumb sector-by-sector copy to get around the fact that your source drive has problems.

In fact, you should Ghost your source drive and attempt the repairs on the new copy.

[Apex]

it did not even get to that point.

i went threw ghost to clone the hdd and when it went to reboot into ghost mode it failed to start thus hosing the partion.

[rajagra]

it did not even get to that point.

i went threw ghost to clone the hdd and when it went to reboot into ghost mode it failed to start thus hosing the partion.

So you were using the Windows version of Ghost?
Hopefully it is just the MBR or active partition that's messed up then.

Do you have a recent copy of FDISK on floppy that you can use to examine the partition table? (Don't use a really old copy of FDISK - they can overwrite the partition table without asking you.)

[Apex]

Sorted.

Booted a spare hdd with xp on, removed the ghost partion virtuall partion (made by ghost so that it can load extra drivers while in dos mode)

set c back to the active partion and jobs a good un it boots