First Test Ended in Disaster: News at 11

[Blu_Haze]

I recently bought the Paragon Partition Manager™ 10.0 Server for use with my home server machines, and before I wanted to trust it with my more valuable equipment I wanted to see how it handled a problem I was having on a regular PC.

The situation is this:

I have a home PC that I was converting over to Windows 7, and had about 70 gigs worth of data I wanted to take with it. I'm fresh out of spare room at the moment, so instead of backing everything up to an external disk, I decided to simply partition off part of the hard drive, do a fresh install of Windows 7, then resize the partition back into one drive when I was finished.

At first I was using Easeus Partition Manager from the Windows XP install to do the initial partitioning, which worked perfectly. However once I had Windows 7 installed, I found that this version didn't work in a 64 bit environment.

After finding this out, I used an older copy of Norton Partition Magic to attempt a resize. Partition Magic failed, giving a few errors along the way, and apparently ended up corrupting the partition tables, making Windows 7 immediately reboot upon trying to load.

Since I had to pay for new software, and wanted something for a server environment anyway, I thought that I'd upgrade to Paragon. I was happy to see that Paragon was able to locate the damaged partitions, which showed as "Invalid", even though I was able to see and access them just fine in a different computer running Windows XP.

I attempted to delete two of the damaged partitions that I no longer needed with the plan of recreating them after they were gone. I left the Storage partition as it was since that contained all of the data that I was saving.

To my disappointment Paragon immediately crashed after it reached 100% while deleting the damaged partitions. Everything then disappeared from Windows view, and the drive now shows as an unformatted RAW hard disk. Paragon now crashes every time I attempt to start it.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/446152/part/paragon-error.JPG

Since Paragon crashes every time I attempt to start it now, I'm using a free copy of Partition Wizard Home Edition. It was able to locate all of the damaged partitions with the recovery wizard, however something is making me nervous.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/446152/part/partwizard.jpg

Note how it's saying that partitions will get deleted, and over in the pending changes area it shows that Disk 3 Partition 1 will be deleted before creating LBA 331356753 (the begining sector of the partition with my data).

I'm thinking that it's wanting to delete the other damaged partitions that I don't care about, and then restore the data from the partition I wanted to keep.

However, there's this slight paranoia thinking that what will happen is it will basically wipe all of the data on the disk, then recreate an empty partition that was the same size as it was before. This would be bad.

I'd love to recover the data on that partition if at all possible, and appreciate anyones opinions or advice on the situation.

Should I just let the recovery wizard do its thing and hope for the best? Or is there a better solution? The data is still there. I can see all of the files in the Recovery Wizard. I just need to recreate the partition tables so that the data is accessible again.

[SIW2]

I am a familiar with PW - it is trying to say the Storage partition will be recovered - the other one will not. If you click Yes, Apply.

If you only want the Data partition, then I would go ahead.

Every time I have done that - the recovered partition is perfect - all Data fully usable/accessible.

Partition Magic is not compatible with NT6 partitioning rules - I would avoid it.

Hope it helps.

[Paragon_Tommy]

Hello Blu_Haze

If you feel more comfortable speaking with us, feel free to contact our support line and we'll try to undo the problem and complete your original plans. I'd prefer to get more information on the current state, what type of partitions you have, its sizes, and what operations were carried out.

1-888-347-5462 option 3, option 1

[Blu_Haze]

Originally Posted by Paragon_Tommy

Hello Blu_Haze

If you feel more comfortable speaking with us, feel free to contact our support line and we'll try to undo the problem and complete your original plans. I'd prefer to get more information on the current state, what type of partitions you have, its sizes, and what operations were carried out.

1-888-347-5462 option 3, option 1

Thanks Tommy, but after SIW2's reassurance I applied the pending changes in Partition Wizard, and it all worked well. I was able to recover the partition with my data intact that Partition Magic and Paragon buggered up a little.

The help was appreciated.

[SIW2]

Hi BluHaze,

I think the problem arose from using Partition Magic.

Sadly, a lot of people have got into all sorts of difficulty because it isn't suitable for Vista/7.

In my experiments with a variety of partition apps., I have concluded that if one complains about invalid partition - do no delete it with the one that is complaining.

Delete it with the one you created the invalid partition with - or Windows Disk Management.

Windows Disk Management appears to tolerate some types of invalid geometry - as it is mostly concerned with the start sectors of the partitions.

However - it is best to delete an invalid partition and recreate it properly or you may have serious problems further down the line.

Paragon PM is a very good app. I have many partition managers and Paragon overall is the best.

PW undelete function is really excellent - but you need to use a little care with some of the other functions.

For example, PW will let you Copy a partition into a smaller space. Disk Management doesn't say anything as the start sectors look OK. However, PW will have allowed you to cause an overrun - potentially problematic later.

I use Paragon for all operations on my Vista and 7 64 bit systems. I only use PW for the undelete function from the boot disc.

I am glad it all worked out for you.