Windows 7 - Created a new partition, and now it's gone

About a week ago, I created a new 150 GB partition on my hard drive (I only have one internal HDD) and set it up as a drive letter Z: called "Memories". Once it was created, formatted and visible, I transferred all of my photos and videos to it from an external drive (I need them on an internal drive so Carbonite will back them up). I know it was working because my husband and I spent some time looking at old photos once they were transferred.

Today, I went to retrieve a picture and see the partition gone! It doesn't even show as an unassigned partition in Disk Management - it's like it is just totally gone. A quick search of my hard drive does not locate any of the images or folders, either.

Please help!

Welcome
Dont know much about it, but read about it here.
Partition recovery software can be of help
Windows 7 Partition Recovery Freeware - Recover Deleted and Lost Partition under Windows 7.

I should have mentioned that recovering it is a secondary concern - I want to know WHY it disappeared so it doesn't happen again. Any ideas?

Presumably you took free space from C:\...is the disk space returned or missing?

I would recommend using the Easeus recovery software Rich recommends or free Partion Wizard (both good) to see if the partition still exists. If it does, reclaim it. See what happens (but do keep a backup of everything you put on the partition).

James

Yes, I had taken from the C: drive and it appears that the space I used has been reclaimed by the main partition.

Odd...do you use HD imaging software? Could an image of the drive have been restored back by someone else? What software did you use to create the partition?

I used these instructions Virtual Hard Disk - Create and Attach VHD to "Create VHD" through disk manager and attach it to a drive letter.

Ah ha! After re-reading the instructions, I was able to locate my .vhd file and re-attach it. Does it not persist when you re-boot? I'd like it to always be present and not have to go re-attach it any time I reboot.

Ah, a VHD. As the tut warning note states:




But may I ask why you are usiing a VHD for this? Why not just partition some space, or better yet, add a drive?

Duh - I never saw that big, red, warning.

Using a VHD because it seemed easy.

Can't add a drive to my tower due to space. I have several external drives, but Carbonite, my backup software, won't back up an external drive, so I wanted to move this content to the existing drive.

Can someone direct me to good partitioning info, then? Guess I need to re-do this.