First off I'm not terribly knowledgeable about data recovery, but I'm learning as I go along.

So I'm trying to fix a drive for a family member. His computer refused to boot, and then did boot eventually but only one of his HDDs was recognized (the one with Windows on it, thankfully), and neither of the partitions of the other did. Instead, all that can be seen in Windows is a single, small FAT32 partition which looks empty but with TestDisk can be seen to have a "Recycled" and a System Volume Information folder. This partition wasn't visible before the booting problem.

I ran TestDisk over the whole drive and found the two missing partitions. The odd part, however, is that the FAT32 partition and the primary missing partition both start at cylinder 0- the FAT32 overlapping the first 214 cylinders of DISK2_VOL1. TestDisk can see files in the second partition (DISK2_VOL2) but not in the first. I need to get files off them both, though. I have to delete either the FAT32 partition or DISK2_VOL1 to let me save the new partition table (... because overlapping partitions presumably is a bad idea ). Should I try just saving the partition table with DISK2_VOL1 and 2 and hope the files show up?

The most important question I guess is a) why did the partition table go poof, and b) what the heck is the FAT32 partition doing there?

"Invisible" FAT32 partitions are common with Dell, Compaq & other computer OEMs. They are "service" or "restore" partitions; they precede the NTSF partition.

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Also, make an image of the drive first before you start writing to it, just in case.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.