Creating partition without destruction

gang I need a refresher. long story as to WHY anyone in right faculties would want to do this, but: how can I [if i can] create a new partition on a failed/failing windows drive without destruction of the data, so I can save it?

this old ide drive has win 2k but can't boot [corruption] - may be malware - little of the drive capacity is used but its all one big partition. can't I create a new partition somehow in free space, load win xp there, then recover? [I have no win2k media and as a matter of ethics REFUSE to have...:-D]

 

Run your partitioning software from the bootable CD. Make sure to set BIOS to boot from optical drive first. Resize the current partition and create a new partition after it.

You say the drive is failing/failed. If this is the case though, it may not be recognized by the partitioning software.

 

cute wouldn't run - the utility UB disc I have can't display either in its default mode or alternative - seen that before so not peculiar to this ugly machine. don't have win2k disc as stated.
Trinity Rescue utility would not run - i may try it again. menu comes up fine but it bailed with an error code when trying to use the HDD utility - it appeared to not recognize the drive controller.
i should have a cadaver in here to day that is about that same p4/ide vintage. maybe i can slave it which was my original intention.

 

I don't see how this can be done.

What free space? I can only see this being remotely possible IF you thoroughly defragmented the hard drive AND consolidated all the free space at the end of the drive immediately before the drive failed. And frankly, I am not sure I put enough emphasis on all that!

If you did not do this, then your files will be scattered across the platters, most likely in many fragments and I just don't see a partition program dealing with that on a failed drive.

What you need to do is use a recovery program like Recuva from the makers of CCleaner and attempt to recover all the data you don't want to lose. Then replace the drive.

 

If the drive hasn't suffered a complete mechanical failure, connect it to another PC using an IDE to USB connector. Then you should be able to retrieve the files.