HD partition gone!

bartman

OK then, here's the background; I have a SATA hard drive which has 2 partitions. C contains system files (as usual), F contains other program files , documents, in fact everything else.

I was running short of space on C, so I used partition manager to increase the size allocated to C and decrease F.

On restart, I have no F partition shown in "My Computer"!
When I go into "Disk Management", C is shown as NTFS Healthy (system), but the other partition has no letter, shows as NTFS Healthy (unknown Partition). It does show the capacity and the amount of free space.
If I right-click on it to attempt to allocate a letter, the only options are Help (no more useful than any other MS help!), and Delete Logical Drive (not at all helpful).

I did think of using Partition Manager again to try to cure this, but guess what, Partition Manager is installed on the F drive!

Has anybody got any ideas about this? I would be very grateful for any help.

Browntoa

rather than play about with a windows partition still live boot with

http://www.hirensbootcd.net/download.html?ver=10.6

then boot into Mini xp when its running

look for the Hirens Cd icon and click on it

and then go through the list to

Partition Find and Mount 2.31: Partition Find and Mount software is designed to find lost or deleted partitions (Windows Freeware).

bartman

Thanks, Browntoa, I'm downloading it now.

....although I'm not sure I have enough knowledge to be trusted with such a product - if it's any guide to my abilities, it took me a good few minutes to find where to click on the web page to download the file! Of course, they make the paid-for ads inviting the download of proprietary software much more prominent; well, I suppose they pay the bills after all!

I assume that I unzip the files, and somehow put them on a CD and boot from that?

rdpro

hiren's downloads as an iso image, and a standalone burning program for it. just open the exe (ccd something) browse to the hiren's image and ta-daaa

Browntoa

there is an ISO file in the zip file, unzip that and burn it to CD

if you dont have CD burning software then

http://www.filehippo.com/download_imgburn/

has an option to Burn an image file

you then need to enter BIOS on the PC (normally F2 as it boots) , may be called setup

look for boot options and make sure that the CD drive is the first item on the list , then save and exit (normally F10) and make sure the CD is in the pc

if I remember there is a mini initial menu that asks if you want to boot from hard disk or CD, you need Cd..

its very user friendly

bartman

Yep, thanks again Browntoa, and thanks rdpro, I found the built-in burning software, done the disc now.
I already have the startup configured to boot from CD if I hit the key during startup, so here goes!

bartman

OK well I thought in had sorted it - booted with the CD, found the Partition Find and Mount. I was able to assign a letter, although not F as the CD was using that. No matter, I thought, I can change it once I'd booted from the HD, so I temporarily assigned it "H".
When I restarted and booted from the HD I was back to square one! - BUT I was still able to access the Partition Find - presumably because it was reading it from the CD which was still in the drive. So I again ran it and assigned the lost partition to F, and I could see all the files again.
However, when I restarted to check that all was well, I was again back to square one.

Browntoa

now you know it finds it , try the same from windows

http://findandmount.com/

it should then correct the MBR

http://findandmount.com/howtouse/

bartman

It only seems to make it "read only".
When I go into "My Computer" it's there OK and i can see all the files, but it's still unassigned and is an "unknown partition" when i go to "Disk Management", and I can't assign it there.
I can't see any other options on Findandmount.

Browntoa

yes it makes it read only....

Browntoa

this is free and sems to recover it properly

http://www.partition-tool.com/partition-recovery-wizard/partition-recovery.htm

download here

http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm