On Sun, 11 May 2008 22:38:39 -0700, sridhar wrote:

> On May 11, 5:34 am, Bill Waddington <william.wadding...@beezmo.com>
> wrote:
>> On Sat, 10 May 2008 13:42:17 -0700, Bill Waddington
>>
>>
>>
>> <william.wadding...@beezmo.com> wrote:
>> >On Sat, 10 May 2008 03:19:07 -0700 (PDT), sridhar <srib...@yahoo.com>
>> >wrote:
>>
>> >>I have been running Win2k/FC8 on my first HDD (80Gb) and only FC5 on
>> >>my 2nd HDD (160Gb). MBR and Grub is on 1sr HD (sda). Things were
>> >>going smoothly until today, when I tried to boot my FC5 I got the
>> >>error "Filesystem unknown and Partition type 0x93". Grub could not
>> >>load FC5. My FC8 and Win2k are still working fine.
>>
>> >>Using fdisk I could change the partition type to 0x83 on the 2nd HDD
>> >>(sdb) for the first 3 partitions but could not change the extended
>> >>partition, which still says unknown. See below
>>
>> >>grub> geometry (hd1)
>> >>drive 0x81: C/H/S = 19457/255/63, The number of sectors = 312581808,
>> >>/ dev/sdb
>> >> Partition num: 0, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x83
>> >> Partition num: 1, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x83
>> >> Partition num: 2, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x83
>> >> Partition num: 3, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x15
>>
>> >>Tried using the install CD to see if I can fix or upgrade my 2nd HD
>> >>but I got the message that partitions are not readable and the I need
>> >>to initialize the HD causing data loss. I have all my important data
>> >>on my 2nd HDD. Can some one pl. help me on how I can resurrect the
>> >>FC5 and or at least recover the data. I have to scream HELP! HELP!
>>
>> >Were you messing around with a new boot manager or fiddling grub? The
>> >*bad* partition IDs look suspiciously like the hidden versions of
>> >regular IDs. At least 0x93 is hidden 0x82. 0x15 doesn't really match
>>
>> 0x93 -> 0x83 (of course)
>>
>> >teh hideen version of anything sane. For instance, 0x05 is a dos
>>
>> man, what a typist...
>>
>> >extended partition for old small drives, and probably not what you had
>> >originally.
>>
>> >You _might_ try changing 0x15 to what you know it should be. 0x0F
>> >perhaps. On the other hand, that could whack what's left of your
>> >drive. Continents could slide into the sea. Winged monkeys could fly
>> >from you posterior. You get the idea. Try this WAG at your own risk.
>> > It is just a _WAG_.
>>
>> >Here's a list of partition IDs in case you don't have one handy:
>>
>> >http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partition...n_types-1.html
>>
>> Hopefully you get the idea through the bad keyboarding. Like I said
>> though, it's just a WAG...
>>
>> Bill
>> --
>> William D Waddington
>> william.wadding...@beezmo.com
>> "Even bugs...are unexpected signposts on the long road of
>> creativity..." - Ken Burtch
>
>
> Just an update.
>
> I was able to resolve the corrupt partition issue by using testdisk. It
> is an unbelievable utility at "http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/
> TestDisk". It worked like a charm. So easy and yet powerful. It analyzed
> all the HDD and suggested a partition which was exactly as before. It
> allows to look into each partition/folder to see if all the files are
> ok. Once you feel ok you can write the partition. The wiki also has step
> by step instructions! Thanks to cgsecurity. It is just beautiful and now
> I feel so much more confident. I had to update you all on this. Thanks
> for your suggestion
>
> NS

I hope you've learned a lesson from this and will do frequent backups in
the future. Also you should replace that drive.