Data all gone

Hello. I know better than to change something without a backup. I know
better. And yet... Did it anyhow, and now am suffering for it. I have
helped some people on this site, so now is my turn to ask for help.

On my son's XP SP2 machine, I wanted to split a logical partition in
two. There is the primary partition, and an extended partition with
logical drives. I used a Partition Magic 8 floppy, and shrank one of
the logical partitions, and created a new partition. Same thing I do
all the time on other machines. Did it just the other day. Anyhow,
shrank a logical partition and created an additional one in the
extended partition. Upon rebooting, the primary partition is toast.
Won't boot at all. I tried an XP boot floppy to all the partitions, but
it can't find any files on the primary partition. I tried a repair from
the setup CD using recovery console, but it wouldn't mount the
partition. I tried using ERD Commander, which told me all the hives
were gone, and all the files were gone, and it wouldn't repair it. Now,
there are lots of tools on the the recovery console and ERD Commander
that I don't know how to use, and haven't had the time at 10:30 pm to
research, so maybe there is something more to do with those.

Interestingly, all the partitions in the extended partition, including
the new ones, seem to be fine. Data partition is OK, gotta be glad of
that, that's for sure.

So what happened? Why did altering something in the extended partition
fry my primary partition? Why would it even touch it? I have always
wanted to know what is happening when Partition Magic and Drive Image
say "Saving System Information". What is that and what is it doing? I
guess it saved some system information to my primary drive. Did it
overwrite the FAT? Why would it do that? Unfortunate how these tools
work most of the time, but maybe 1-2% of the time in my hands they just
destroy everything.

Anyhow, given the time and my desire to move on, I then backed up the
hosed primary partition to one of the other partitions using Drive
Image (should have done it before, should have done it before, keep
saying it), and restored a backup of the c drive from several months
ago. This works fine, though all the modifications from his school's
requirements and probably a few data files here and there are gone.
Will take days to weeks to get everything back to normal.

So, my turn for help. What happened? Any way to mount that corrupted
image, or recover it and set it back up as a second primary partition?
Crow tastes bad, real bad. Thanks,

Irwin

What, no help for this problem? I will to reply to myself to bring it
to the top and perhaps rekindle some interest. Does anyone know:
1. What happened to my c drive?
2. What 'Saving system information is doing?"

Thanks,
Irwin