Windows 7: Is there a Partition Wizard guru in the house?

I had been reallocating space amongst my 3 hard drives using Partition Wizard 4.2. I noticed on reboot that only 2 disks were showing up in Windows.

Booted into PW and saw that the 3rd drive was apparently alive and well - its a WD500 and was split into 2 logical drives; 360 to: Programs and the balance to a logical drive: data.

I reallocated the space slightly and hit Apply. It seemed to run its routine OK, then lo and behold, Merry Gosh-darned Christmas ... Bad Disk, Status= None and all the options are grayed out. WTF?



I ran the partition Recovery Wizard, and it simply shows the status as lost/deleted, and gives me no options. Now what?

dose it show up in disk management ?
if so can you upload a snapshot?

scrooge

No - its does not appear under Windows disk management. That is why I booted into PW,

Hello there, I have contacted one member, maybe he can help you.

Use latest Partition Wizard boot disk. Does the HD still show up? What are it's listings? Post back a camera snap if you can.

See if you can run PW File System checker on the HD, but it will need a partition to run it on. In the past when Disk Mgmt could not see a HD, I was able to get PW Windows version to see and repair it with System File Checker until it an autostart box popped up. You can try this first with the PW boot disk, but to run File Checker it may want a lettered partition which only appears in Windows version.

PW disk also has a HD Surface scan on it you can run to try to repair surface errrors. However the WD Data Lifeguard HD Diagnostic DOS version written to CD then booted to run an Extended Scan, will give a better chance at repairing the HD so that it can be returned to service or at least have data rescued.

Thanks, Greg.

Definite;y some weirdness going on ... the disk appears under My Computer as 88% unused, but is not available in Disk Manager. I'm going to run the WD diagnostics and will report back.

TIA for the help.

Not that it's necessarily related to your current problem, but as has already been mentioned you should upgrade to the latest installed version 7.0 of PW.

And of course also download the ISO for standalone boot PW and burn to CD, for when running under Windows for a specific is not allowed.

For sure, at the very least v4.2 had some user-interface issues that have been addressed in later versions 5, 6 and now 7 that I think you'll appreciate.

OK, so the disk passes the WD tests, and now appears under My Computer, with both its partitions. Its appearing in Disk Manager as Disk 0 ... it was Disk 3 ... and none of the programs work from the shortcuts, but at least I'm moving forward and don't appear to have lost data. Yay!

What about PW Check File System?

If you can run it from Windows, Disk Check with both repair boxes checked is preferable.

well - it was OK until I had an explorer hang, and then the sytem would not restart without a hard reset .. and now I'm back to no third drive again!

I installed PW7, but it does not see the drive either.

One possible clue is that when it was up, the drives had letters that were all well up the alphabet ... G: H: P: and now they C: D: H: F: