We're quite often asked to analyse a DiskPatch logfile, because Norton Partition magic reports 'partition table errors'. There are also 3rd party partition table doctor tools that frequently report errors. We have seen them do it here. On harddisks that were perfectly well. And although we know partition tables pretty well, we did not find any errors. We also didn't understand the errors those tools were reporting. They were non-descriptive and displayed numeric values we were unable to find in any partition table or boot sector on the disk.

And this is our perspective on those errors:

In nine out of ten cases, despite the fact PM reports errors, data can be accessed. So there is no need for data recovery. So why not ask Symantec tech support about those errors? It's their tool reporting the errors and they are (or should be) most qualified to deal with them. The same goes for partition table doctor like tools: They report an error and yet at the same time there appears to be nothing wrong with the hard disk.

So, then you have to decide if you will let PartitionMagic or some other partition table doctor or repair tool 'fix' the error. We have experimented with that as well. And to our horror, in a number of cases, we found that after the fix we were actually dealing with data loss: One or more partitions could no longer be accessed by Windows.

Our recommendation: Do not let any automatic partition table error fixing tools fix a thing unless you have a working and up to date backup. If you do not won a partition doctor type tool, do not buy one: Chances are the error is bogus anyway, just make sure you have that backup. If you can't live with the error, backup (preferably using a hard disk imaging tool), delete all partitions and restore the backup.

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Joep