Recovering from Partition Magic Failure

[brashear]

I tried to run Norton Partition Magic 8.0 in WindowsXP home to change my 320GB C: drive into two 160GB partitions. When it appeared to be finishing up the project, PM8 locked up, showed an error message, and ground to a halt. Nothing but cutting off the power would get me out of the lockup. I powered up the computer again, but it would not boot up. Fortunately I had recently backed up all my important data files, EXCEPT for some Paperport .max files (less than 50) that I would like to resurrect. I have not turned the computer back on since then, from fear of making the problem worse. Should RecoverMyFiles be able to tackle this job. Should I do something else first, or use some other software? Should I try fixMBR or fixboot? Should at least one copy of the MFT be findable? Which mode of RecoverMyFiles is most likely to be useful? Thanks for any suggestions or help you can offer!!

[GDH]

The best thing to do, if you have the skills and equipment, would be to take this hard drive out of the current computer and connect it to another computer as the secondary drive.

The reason I say this, is that it a). Preserves the drive in its current state (if you try fixing it, then it is most likely from a data recovery perspective that things will get worse), b). It greatly reduces the chance of Windows, other programs, or users writing data to it.

I suggest when you run Recover My Files that you perform a Complete Format Recover and search for the default select file types but also add the PaperPort.max file type. At the end of the search look in both File View and Folder View of the search results screen.

Good luck.