Problems

The storage partition on my second computer gave out. I have no idea what was the cause, it just suddenly became inaccessible. It would've been a simple task of finding a diagnose tool online, but my internet connection somehow dropped as well. The problem was obviously corrupted partition information, but it had heavy impact on the system performance, as the OS tried to read the partition in vain again and again. In my frantic effort to alleviate the performance hit, I deleted the problem partition, and made a new one over it. I didn't format the new partition, since I still want to be able to recover the data. When my internet connection came back the next day, I got Active Partition Recovery, which managed to recover my old partition, but it appeared as RAW to XP. Then I got Partition Table Doctor, which fixed the boot table in a jiffy, but the partition returned to its previous state and became inaccessible again. In the end, I gave up and just created a new partition in its place. I lost my 40GBs of data. All the backup programs I had, all the Japanese dramas, all the K-1 fights etc. I now suspect all would've been well if I didn't delete the faulty partition at the beginning, and instead fix it directly with partition Table Doctor. Let this be a lesson to you, don't delete partitions on a whim.