Drive C partition unallocated

I have Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit installed on drive C of the internal hard disk of my laptop. Yesterday, after I put my laptop in the hibernate mode, upon resume, there is a blank screen with a message that says unable to find the operating system. After rebooting, it is still the same, with the blank screen and message. Prior to this, my drive C has been quite filled up with not much free space left.

I tried booting up Linux Mint from a USB drive, but my internal hard drive could not be mounted. In GParted, the drive is shown as unallocated. I tried to use Windows Recovery, but it could not detect the operating system.

Not knowing much, I tried the suggestions listed on this webpage: » How To Fix: External Disk Drive Suddenly Became RAW
then upon booting up, no more blank screen, but there was a BSOD. I tried again to boot into Linux Mint from a USB drive, and this time, I could access partition D on my internal hard disk. However, partition C is still unaccessible and unallocated. Windows Recovery still could not detect the operating system.

Is there any way I can restore the partition? I would like to retrieve my data from partition C. Thanks in advance.

Kaktussoft said:

Download partition wizard bootable CD (last from list) Free download Magic Partition Manager Software, partition magic alternative, free partition magic, partition magic Windows 7 and server partition software - Partition Wizard Online
Burn it and boot from it. Of course boot on sick machine

• what primary partitions do you see (size, label,type)?
• which primary partition is active?
• what logical partitions do you see?
• How many partitions are gone?

Best thing to do is make a camshot and post.

"then upon booting up, no more blank screen, but there was a BSOD"=>only one disk in system then? What info on bsod?

1. The primary partitions are:
- PQSERVICE (9.77GB, FAT32)
- DATA (110.07GB, NTFS)
- (3GB, NTFS)

2. The active primary partition is PQSERVICE.

3. The logical partition is the one unallocated, which I presume to be drive C which I'm trying to recover. There is no label for that partition.

4. As far as I can see, there is no partition gone. However, there are 2 partitions without label, 1 of which is the unallocated partition and the other is the 3GB primary partition.

Here is the camshot:


Yes, I have only one internal hard disk, with 2 partitions, C and D. Here is the shot of the BSOD:

TVeblen said:

And while you are in Partition Wizard you could use the tool to "Rebuild MBR" (Master Boot Record).
It sounds like it got corrupted or deleted.

I did a "Rebuild MBR" while in the Partition Wizard. Now it is booting up into System Recovery. It still cannot detect the Windows 7 installation on partition C. It only detects the recovery partition X: PQSERVICE.

Kaktussoft said:

MBR is just sector 0 of physical disk. It consists of:

• Disk signature. Just sort of label to uniquely identify the disk....sort of label.
• Boot code. You did refresh that (bootrec.exe /fixmbr) (rebuild mbr). Boot code looks for first active partition and executes it's volume boot record.

Both are NOT the problem! MBR also consists of:

• Partition table.

And that the reason! I don't why ... but you have a lot of unallocated space! There's no pointer in partition table to this space so it things it's unallocated.

I hope your data is still in the unallocated space. Try to recover it using partition wizard, explanation here
How to perform lost partition recovery and deleted partition recovery under Windows? Partition Recovery Help.
Of course select DATA and PQSERVICE as well if you want to keep them. Try to recover in "unallocated space" and do "quick scan".

I see. I hope the data is still there as well. Performing the quick scan in the Partition Recovery Wizard now.

I did not see my Windows 7 drive. I am seeing a lot of drives with "Boot" label. Here is the camshot:


What do I do next? I hope the data is still recoverable?