Partition Magic screwed up! Need Help

Hey, so I was using partition magic to combine 2 partitions on my external usb hdd. All the files were on the 2nd partition of the drive, and I was using partition magic to combine it into one primary partition.

So what partition magic does is copies all the files from the logical partition to the primary partition then deletes the logical partition then resizes the primary partition. the problem is, during the night sometime, an error popped up probably after the files were being copied. and now the partitions are all screwed up and I can't access any of the files on my drive.

I know the files are all still there, and I haven't formatted anything because I don't want to screw it up more. Is here a way to access all my files? help is greatly appreciated!

 

you might try downloading a linux live disk like ubuntu

you can run it from a cd and possibly see the files on the usb or copy them to your c drive and make them available

 

i've tried getting a ubuntu live cd to boot on my laptop before. Tried a couple of times and it never did fully boot. So for some reason i doubt that it will happen.

I can't even access the external drive anymore. when i plug in it into the USB it doesnt recognize it as an HDD and doesnt to anything. although i think that it tries to, because Windows Explorer refreshes, but i don't see the drive letter.