Hard Drive Management Gone Haywire

Injust · 13 Mar 2013

Hey,
Yup, I screwed up totally

Now, I can't even boot. In Diskpart, the drive shows as RAW. What should I do?

gregrocker · 13 Mar 2013

Download and burn to CD Partition Wizard bootable CD ISO. Rightclick on the ISO file, choose Burn or Open with Windows Image burner to burn to CD.

Then run Partition Wizard Partition Recovery Wizard - Video Help to see if it finds anything to recover. If not I would run Partition Wizard Partition surface test to check the HD condition as it may be failing.

If you cannot recover any partitions then try booting the Win7 installer to create and format a partition to reinstall as shown in Clean Install Windows 7 steps 6/7.

Look over these steps which assure a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 so this time you stick with only the tools and methods which assure you'll get and keep a perfect install.

Injust · 13 Mar 2013

gregrocker said:

Download and burn to CD Partition Wizard bootable CD ISO. Rightclick on the ISO file, choose Burn or Open with Windows Image burner to burn to CD.

Then run Partition Wizard Partition Recovery Wizard - Video Help to see if it finds anything to recover. If not I would run Partition Wizard Partition surface test to check the HD condition as it may be failing.

If you cannot recover any partitions then try booting the Win7 installer to create and format a partition to reinstall as shown in Clean Install Windows 7 steps 6/7.

Look over these steps which assure a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 so this time you stick with only the tools and methods which assure you'll get and keep a perfect install.

As of now, I am using TestDisk and analyzing the disk. I have spent 2hrs on it, and am at 70%, so do you know how to use the program and can you guide me through?

Injust · 13 Mar 2013

I'm following the guide over here right now, and I just finished the quick search. Remember how I had 2 partitions and a block of unallocated space between them? The first partition was my system/data, and the second was a test partition. I made a screenshot available over here, and it has found the test partition only.
What do I do now? Should I proceed with the deep search in TestDisk, or follow your instructions and use Partition Wizard?

EDIT: At this rate, it'll take more than an hour to finish the deep scan for TestDisk, so I'm booting from my Partition Wizard USB and hope that it'll boot.

FYI: I was using the USB of PartedMagic, and when I used that partition management software, it detected the partition but the entire thing was detected as unallocated memory :P

Britton30 · 14 Mar 2013

As Greg said don't just run stuff if you don't know how or what it does. there have been several steps posted which have worked for many others.

Injust · 14 Mar 2013

Only problem here, Greg, is that I don't have access to CDs right now, only USBs. I need to be able to boot PW from a USB!

Injust · 14 Mar 2013

gregrocker said:

Download and burn to CD Partition Wizard bootable CD ISO. Rightclick on the ISO file, choose Burn or Open with Windows Image burner to burn to CD.

Then run Partition Wizard Partition Recovery Wizard - Video Help to see if it finds anything to recover. If not I would run Partition Wizard Partition surface test to check the HD condition as it may be failing.

If you cannot recover any partitions then try booting the Win7 installer to create and format a partition to reinstall as shown in Clean Install Windows 7 steps 6/7.

Look over these steps which assure a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 so this time you stick with only the tools and methods which assure you'll get and keep a perfect install.

Just got PW working on a CD, now doing the Surface Test.

gregrocker · 14 Mar 2013

Did it find anything when you ran the Partition Recovery Wizard?

Injust · 14 Mar 2013

I just did the Surface Test, it was all good. No errors.
Doing the partition recovery wizard now. Just saying, it's finding a lot (about 6 so far) 3MB partitions that I didn't make. They only have System Volume Information folders in them :P

DETAIL:
I'm at 32% right now. It has so far found 4 partitions, none of the matching size of mine.
All of them are NTFS, and the label is "Boot". They are all 3.01MB in size, and all have 2.45MB used. All the statuses are "Lost/Deleted"

Injust · 14 Mar 2013

Ok, so I'm at 58% done with a full scan on partition recovery. I see 7 of those partitions that are NTFS, and the label is "Boot". They are all 3.01MB in size, and all have 2.45MB used. All the statuses are "Lost/Deleted".