Cannot find hard drive

Torq2 · 04 Jan 2014

Hi,

I was wondering if someone on here could help me. I was trying to find out my hard drive speed as it is the lowest score on my setup. I downloaded a small speed checker program and ran it. It was set to read mode and was writing a log file. I then switched it to write test and got a message saying the it would destroy data, I assumed it meant the log file and clicked ok.

All seemed well until suddenly the computer restarted. It then could not find the systems files. I checked the bios and found that it was trying to boot to "apti drive", whatever that is, and so I changed it back to my hard drive. Still it wouldn't fire up.

I have been looking through the forums and have put in the win 7 disk and tried to repair it, also bootrec, bootsect/ mbr, nothing works.

I downloaded an updated bios file which seems to have loaded ok.

I am showing a hard drive in setup and everything looks fine. When I am in cmd prompt and try to change to C drive, it doesn't recognise it. In cmd the drive is showing as X, all I can get is my cd drive which has changed to D.

It is as if my hard drive has vanished. I am assuming that the program wiped my start up files, but I can't understand why I cannot reinstall them. I also tried to reinstall win7, but it can't find a drive to install to. I am getting a bit desparate now please help.

It looks like my hard drive has just vanished.

Golden · 04 Jan 2014

What was the name of the software?

It sounds as if it has wiped the drive.....use this to check if the disk/partitions still exist or have data on them:

Torq2 · 05 Jan 2014

Hi Golden,

Funny I posted a reply and it doesn't seem to be here. I downloaded lost partition recovery and it looks like all the partitions have been deleted. Luckily it does show all my files so maybe I can recover them. I'm not quite sure how it works so I'm a bit wary after what has happened, but thanks for the advice.

Regards

Golden · 05 Jan 2014

We better double check....if your partitions are lost then so are the files. Lets check that something hasn't been lost in translation.

Please follow this tutorial to see exactly what is left on your disk worth salvaging:
https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...cy-backup.html

Use screen capture images so I don't misunderstand you.

Torq2 · 05 Jan 2014

Hi Golden,

I'll discribe where I am and what I am looking at.

I am on power data recovery program, in the lost partion recovery section. At the top of the screen is my hard drive in black type. Below is my 4 partitions in red type, they say deleted partition. If I click on them the left screen changes to "open", "full Scan". If I open them I can see all my folders and files. The program say's click on a file to save it, but I don't know where it would save to. The problem I have is that I know nothing about this stuff. I was kinda hoping that I could just click a button and all my files would be restored. I have an old hard drive but it is only 150gb, whereas my current drive is a 1tb, it ain't gonna fit. I just clicked on of the files and tried to save it, and it turns out I got to buy the program to do that. I will try the peppermint one and let you know. This is not looking good, I think.

Regards

Torq2 · 05 Jan 2014

Hi,

I just tried the peppermint thing but the pc doesn't recognise it for some reason.

I'm thinking to maybe put my old hard drive in the case and see if I can install win7 on it and use it as the main HDD. Maybe I will be able to access the other hdd as a slave drive.

Golden · 05 Jan 2014

You need to be more specific with the Peppermint 3 errors.....it should work without trouble

Torq2 · 05 Jan 2014

I don't know what to tell you. I installed it on a flash drive as the instructions, put the flashdrive in the slot and set removable drive in boot up, and when I started the computer it just ignored the drive and went straight to unable to find system files error.

I have now installed an old hdd and put win 7 on it. I put the partition recovery program on and it at least can see the drive. I think I may buy the program and try to recover the drive, unless you know a free program which will do it.

Thanks for your help

Regards

alan10 · 05 Jan 2014

Golden said:

We better double check....if your partitions are lost then so are the files.

Sorry but that is ALMOST TRUE BUT DEFINITELY NOT TRUE.

My experience - Long story short
total success with Freeware (no restrictions for home use) Lazesoft Data Recovery
Download Lazesoft Data Recovery Home 3.4.0

My experience - short story long :-

Windows Booted up stupid and due to a windows race hazard and confused Disk 0 (GPT) not with Disk 1 (MBR) and thought it had two disks with identical 8 hex-digit digit Disk ID numbers.
That is illegal.
Windows promptly put Disk 1 (MBR) OFFLINE and due to Microsoft stupidity it tried to re-write the Disk ID of the GPT style Disk 0, BUT in reality it over-wrote the multi-hyphenated GPT Identity value with the 8 hex-digit identity which had been owned by the MBR style Disk 1.
Windows on my MBR style SSD Disk 2 came to life without access to :-
Disk 2 which held system files Pagefile.Sys and %TEMP%, and also held all my partition backups for Disks 0 and 1 ;
Disk 1 (now off-line) which held my browser profiles and other things that are useful when trying to get help fixing a broken PC.

Disk 2 was now seen as have its first two partitions RAW and all the remaining partitions of Unallocated Space.
The first RAW partition previously held Pagefile.sys
Partition backups, Virtual Machines, and lots of other goodies were in that "Unallocated Space".
Not a good start to the day.

I quickly put Disk 2 off-line and was then able to put Disk 1 on-line and start browsing.

So far as Windows was concerned, all of Disk 0 partitions were lost.
A few file recovery tools made valiant efforts that failed.
One expensive utility did appear to recover everything,
BUT Macrium rejected the resurrected image backups,
probably because the Recovery tool accurately located the start of each file and the size of each file,
and reconstituted the correct number of contiguous sectors from the start of the file,
BUT unfortunately the backups were written to fragmented (never defragged) free space and as a result the files themselves had been fragmented and scattered across the partition,
so hash checksums protected me from thinking the restoration was successful.

Eventually I tried the Freeware Home version of Lazesoft

That recovered all the files from both RAW partitions, and also from all of the many partitions now seen as UNALLOCATED ( also to be known as LOST ).
The bulk of the recovery consists of two main Macrium archives :-
406 off *.mrimg Windows 7 backups totalling 243.7 GB
268 off *.mrimg Ancient Windows XP backups totalling 72.9 GB
All of those backups have now been validated by Macrium
Absolutely perfect recovery of 316.6 GB

I did not NEED those backup files because almost all of them had previously been backed up and validated on an external backup
BUT my GPT style Disk 0 held 101.8 GB of other files for which there was no hash checksums to validate,
and which I had not backed up.
Absolute proof of perfect recovery of 316.6 GB in 674 files gives me reasonable trust in the integrity of the remaining 101.8 GB in 7900 remaining files (which being much smaller have far fewer fragments to cause confusion.)

I used Data Recovery / Partition Recovery

URGENT P.S.

I kept Disk 0 OFF-LINE whilst recovering its data.
That way it was write protected so that if I made a mistake with unfamiliar recovery software,
there was no way that it could write to Disk 0 and over-write the data I wanted to recover.
I am pleased to say that Write protection does not appear to impede recovery.

Regards
Alan

alan10 · 05 Jan 2014

Torq2 said:

I think I may buy the program and try to recover the drive, unless you know a free program which will do it.

I was surprised that commercial software was offered here.
I have now looked at the link you were given and CANNOT see any price tag.

Regardless.

Once you get freeware Lazesoft working on a computer it can create a WinPE Boot Recovery CD with tons of goodies in addition to data recovery.