Guess this can be posted here because I hope it is a software issue... Need help from the experts.
 
I done it real good this time. Fried things to a crisp in a couple clueless mouse clicks.
 
Was experimenting with the Acronis rescue disc and it deleted the partitions off the hard drive of my music computer and the backup external drive.
 
Data is still there on the external drive, but the partitions erased on the desktop, so won't even boot.
 
Any recommendations for a software that can restore the partition structure?
 
Many thanks in advance.
 
John
 
(sitting on a wooden chair in the corner with my nose on the wall until the wife tells me I can take a bathroom break)
 
 
 

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This might have been better in the Computers forum..  but I feel for ya, I really do.  I've done the same in the past and just started again with a fresh Windows install.
 
A quick google search came up with this though.  I've NOT tried it so I don't warrant it, but it seems to be what you need.
I'm sure there will be other similar tools.

Don't know what software you use, but if you can get it onto a 
Flash drive and run it you should be able to recover the partition(s)

That's why it's always good to have an emergency boot disk (either on 
a flash drive or a CD or DVD) with your software tools on it...

Many of the free partition softwares can do this...you just have to
to get to another computer and make a boot disk with the software on it
to be able to run it to make the recovery (as long as nothing else has been 
done since you deleted the partitions)

Don't know if that helped or not...

Thanks so far guys,
 
Grim prospect going forward into unknown oblivion. Someone rightly prescribed that backup has to be in more than one place. Wish I would have listened and turned advice into action.
 
Laptop is running Sonar as my second installation, but the PC with all the data files, installations, tweaks, fine tune refinements is toasted.
 
Crap, I was supposed to be doing an oil change and alternator belt adjustment on the car  before I screwed this up.
 
John

Also, thanks Karyn. What I came up with too. Waiting for Easus to either work or fail with the recovery, several hours more grinding away. Then Active Partition Recovery.
 
Really appreciate your time to research and advise.
 
John
 

Just be careful booting from a second drive and trying to simply recreate the partitions.  That WILL destroy the data,  you need to use a tool to rebuild/restore the existing partition table.

Karyn,
 
Yes, see this problem on the horizon.
 
Severe lesson for me going forward. Dollars and time will heal the crash as much as I can open the credit card. Time however, something we can't put a dollar sign on as we tick through what is left in our short stay here.
 
John

 You are not the only one that has done something like that. 

Kite,
 
Well, that makes me feel better (slightly)
 
Really messed up the disc but have gotten back to getting win XP installed, all the way back to sp2.  Wow, there is goes, even more primitive than out of the box. Everything wiped to zero.
 
This could be a blessing though...and a bit at peace with my forced annihilation.
 
Will install Sonar, Reaper, Audition, soundcard and then only the vst/vsti needed and used. Hundreds and hundreds of plugins never used down to a few.
 
Best,
John