Lost Mac OS X partition after failed Boot Camp attempt

Hi I have a friend who has the newest iMac and he attempted to install Windows XP through Boot Camp. He did the partitioning and installation, but when he booted he found out that WinXP has actually NOT been installed at all, while the installer said clearly that installation has finished.
Not only did he not have Windows to dual-boot into, he also seems to have lost his Mac partition! I tried to repair his disk using Disk Utility, but there's absolutely NOTHING showing that is available for repair.
This has haunted ME ever since because I wished to install Windows XP Professional through Boot Camp on my MacBook Pro now, but unlike my friend who did the Boot Camping while his Mac was brand-new and has no fear of reinstallation, I have like 100GB worth of beloved data which even my external harddrive does not have the space to fully back them up. I don't want to risk losing my own Mac partition in the process, so could anyone sort of tell me why do people lose their Mac partitions during Boot Camping?!
Thanks.

Some times the only partition people seem to see is their OS X partition, not the FAT one that BootCamp Assistant should have created.
End result is the partition tables and user partitions are shot and support for XP's Master Boot Record is gone (Vista is happy with GPL and seems safer to me in dozen installs).
Backup. Don't do anything without one. TimeMachine AND a bootable clone (SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner, even Apple Disk Utility's Restore). In BootCamp Assistant, there is an option to view, save or print out the pdf manual. Worth the read.
Maybe more online help? or even an on-screen "Do you want TimeMachine to update your files first before proceeding?" Always have two backups, one that is off-line. Use WinClone to backup FAT and NTFS. http://www.twocanoes.com
500GB drives and FW/USB cases are cheap enough and good investment.
http://www.macsales.com/firewire/
Upgrading from Tiger to Leopard, and from BootCamp 1.x, seemed to mangle more than a few. Why people don't see their BootCamp partition and only 130GB or something designated for OS X? no idea.
And a few tried to install and wiped out small 128 MB "EFI" partitions that need to be before and after each user partition.

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