[plug] Help! Fdisk Stuffup!

[Trevor Phillips]

*sigh*
It's not my day today...

Are there any partition guru's out there? Especially in the Recovery-Of field
of expertise??

What Happened:
I was reclaiming some disk space, and so with Partition Magic, extended the
Extended partition, creating a 1 gig of empty space at the START of the
Extended. The rest of the extended was taken up with 2x4Gig partitions.
Back in Linux, I used standard old fdisk to create a new Linux partition in the
new space. It created this 1 gig part fine, I previewed the results, and
everything looked correct, told it to write changes, and whammo! 9 Gigs of Data
gone! (ie; the other 2 DOS partitions in the Extended, with all my personal
files!)

Argh!!!!!

Any tips on recovering from this? I have done nothing since, so the data is
still on the HDD untouched. Is there any way to recreate the partition info,
regaining access to the data?? 

I'd try Partition Magic again, but it was on one of the vanished drives. *sigh*
I'd delete the new 1 Gig part (in the hopes the other two will reappear), but I
don't know if that'd help or hinder at this stage...

The partition info as it stands now is this:

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 1582 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
 
   Device Boot   Start      End   Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1            1       17   136521   82  Linux swap
/dev/hda2          283     1582 10442250    f  Win95 Extended (LBA)
/dev/hda3          146      282  1100452+  83  Linux native
/dev/hda4   *       18      145  1028160    b  Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda5          283      413  1052226   83  Linux native

The two additional partitions are within 414-1582 ...

Possible Attack Plan:
  - Create a new FAT32 under Linux of 414-1582, and reboot into Windoze. This
should show me one of the partitions, of its old size (thanks to DOS's own
records of the data)
  - After getting the exact size of that first disk, reboot into Linux, and
create TWO FAT32's, based on the known size of the first

I don't know if this'd work or not, and if it did, I suspect I'd be left with
two drives I could only access in Windows, as Linux would think they'd be
blank. WOULD this work? If it did, is there any way to copy DOS's part info to
the main part config, without wiping the data?

I *really* don't want to lose this data. No, it is not backed up; this is 9
gigs of Data on my home PC, and I can't afford DAT/Orb/Jaz backups of that much
data.

ANY ideas would be most welcome! *sigh*

-- 
. Trevor Phillips             -           http://jurai.murdoch.edu.au/ . 
: CWIS Technical Officer         -           T.Phillips at murdoch.edu.au : 
| IT Services                       -               Murdoch University | 
 >------------------- Member of the #SAS# & #CFC# --------------------<
| On nights such as this, evil deeds are done. And good deeds, of     /
| course. But mostly evil, on the whole.                             /
 \      -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)                          /