[ubuntu-uk] Disk Rescue!

[Traveller]

On 29/08/2010 12:20, daveg at boavon.plus.com wrote:
> I have spent best part of today trying to rescue my 20GB hard disk from my
> beloved Toshiba Portege running Ubuntu 10.4 and XP on a partition that is
> hardly used.
>
> Last updates must have screwed my MBR (I'm guessing but may be wrong about
> the updates - but do reckon the MBR is no longer any good)
>
> I've messed about with various partitioners, run up a few live distros
> including runnig cfdisk -z from a live cd but all to no avail.  I dont
> care about any data - I'll be happy with a fresh install.  I'm beginning
> to think my IDE conroller has gone.  Thought those were on disks though -
> not boards - but this is an old machine - circa 2002/3. Did try attaching
> it into an even older Toshiba - but same problems.  Don't have any spare
> disks to try on the Portege.
>
> Just downloading a live version of Gparted but I dont think this will help
> somhow - but fingers crossed.
>
> Anyone got any tips?
>
>
Not sure I understand what the problem is! Are you able to access the 
disk at all? Do you get warnings, etc. when you try to boot? Do you have 
an OS that can be booted from the disk? Not long ago, I munged up a dual 
boot, and to get WinXP back, I had to use my rescue Disk, open a command 
prompt and run "fixmbr", which killed grub, but gave me back my XP. 
Perhaps you need to do something similar?

		Dave