Windows 7: Harddisk space became unusable

Hi
I have bought this DELL INSPIRON N5010 five months back. I was running that with Windows 7. For some reasons I wanted to reinstall my OS. I tried with Windows 7 Ultimate. But it did not work. Later I could not login to my previous windows 7 proffesional also, getting the error some recent hardware or software change caused this problem. So I tried to install Ubuntu Linux and I was successful in doing so. Now the concern is , out of my 500 GB hard-disk, 420 GB is now become unusable. I could not see the partitions from parted utility from Ubuntu Linux. So I checked the partition table, there it is listed as Unusable space.

If you're on Linux you might as well learn to use it:
parted - Linux Command - Unix Command

Either that or download Partition Wizard iso and burn to CD
Just google

I tried with parted, the print command of parted utility is not at all showing the 420 GB space. (Although this 420 GB space is not s single partition). And parted is not capable of resizing NTFS file system. this unusable space is NTFS file system only.

I don't know how "unusable space" can be NTFS only. If you can burn a boot CD and your system can boot from CD I'd try Partition Wizard ISO. You don't need an OS. Just boot the CD. If you have some way to back up what you have now I'd do that first.

Also I'd look for tutorials and forums on Partition Wizard site. You may find solutions from similar problems.

Hi,

The space has recently become unusable. But there were 4 NTFS partitions which were working fine on Windows. Hence I mentioned the Unusable Space is NTFS only. Initially I was working only with Windows 7. But when I tried to install UBUNTU Linux, it showed me only one partition out of my 5 partitions which I used for installing ubuntu (EXT4 FS).

I tried with partition magic.( I have never used that before). But it is showing my 476 GB as a single dynamic drive, and all the options like extend, delete,etc are greyed out hence I was not able to do anything using that. the drive is mentioned as *: , I am not sure whether this is how normally Partition magic will show the drive name. Kindly help. I have a backup of my important data, Hence I can even go for formatting the complete drive, if I have such an option.

Thanks and regards,
Sakthi

Partition Magic should not be used on Vista or later. It's not compatible with Vista or Windows Seven NTFS partitions. Use Partition Wizard.

Try to post a screen shot or report from Partition Wizard so people can see what's what instead of going by a text description.

ok.. I will try with that and update you.. Thanks a lot..

I tried with Partition wizard's recover partition option.. It really worked and I managed to recover all my partitions..

Thanks

Regards,
Sakthi