[X-Newbies] Help! Total HD Meltdown

[deetya at cbn.net.id]

Hi, listas, I truly hope you can help me on this one.

I returned home from vacation to find that a partition on my HD has
disappeared. The diagnosis is "Invalid Key Length"

I partitioned my HD into two, a system partition and a data partition. I
just booted up my eMac 700mhz, and the data partition is gone.

When I first logged in as Admin, a dialog box popped up saying a disk
partition named "Unknown" tried to mount but failed, do you want to launch
DiskUtility?

I did, and DiskUtility said "Invalid Key Length" Apparently DiskUtility
cannot repair it.

So, here are the questions:

1) Can my partition be fixed? Or is it lost forever?

2) If the partition is lost, is there any way to at least save the data?

3) What could've caused this? A crash due to a power outage? Somebody
(like my sister) messing around?


My computer is an eMac 700Mhz (1st gen eMac) with system 10.1.5.

Please help me. It just happens that the morrow is a holiday for the local
Mac dealer, so I can't ask for any help from them.

Help me Obi-Wans, y'all are my only hope