Has anyone recoverd a partion table with a tool called "gpart". This tool scans the entire disk block by block looking for partition begin patterns. The guesses can then be used to recreate the partition table by hand.

A friend of mine wanted to reinstall Win2000 on a dual boot machine.

The (fateful) sequence of events: --------------------------------- 1. I copied the first sector of /dev/hda to a file /root/MBR.grub using dd. 2. Booted from the Win2K CDROM and installed Win2K. 3. Try booting. No grub. Directly goes on and boots Windows. 4. Booted from RedHat 7.3 CDROM, entered rescue mode. It recognised the existing linux partitions. Copied the first sector of /dev/hda to /root/MBR.win, again using dd. Then copied the /root/MBR.grub to /dev/hda. 5. Try booting. Grub appears. Enter Linux choice - boots Linux properly. But when Windows is selected in grub, it pops up Grub again. 6. Again booted using RedHat CDROM. Copied /root/MBR.win to /dev/hda. 7. Try booting. Nothing. Just a blank screen. No error messages. 8. Panic. 9. Try booting using RedHat CDROM. Now it doesn't find any Linux partitions. Only raw device /dev/hda available. 10. Panic! 11. Compile "gpart" on another machine and transferred it to this m/c using a floppy. (in Linux rescue mode). Started gpart.

I will try and get the output of gpart and post it here.

Any help, advice will be appreciated.

- Chetan