My hard drive appears to be seriously screwed up..can you please help?

Hello to you,

In my course of computing, I had occasion to look at the Hard Drive formatting. What I found is kind of weird. I should only have a HDD with about 120 GB of storage, divided into 3 partitions, one for Windows 7, another for Windows 8, and another for Data.

However, as you can see from the screen capture, Windows Disk Management is showing much more than that. Can you please help me? Thanks! :shock:

Hi,

Yes, it looks like you have other partitions not formatted as NTFS. Which tool did you use to format? Examine the disk layout using Partition Wizard - what do you see?

Best Free Partition Manager Freeware and free partition magic for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition.

Regards,
Golden

Waiting for Internet Repair

Hi Guys,

I really appreciate your help with this, and I will download those programss and then post the screen caps after I get my Internet fixed. I have ATT UVERSE 24x3, and it is currently running at 0.89 down and 0.55 up. At these speeds, I cannot get anything done!

In the meantime, however, about my HD. I had a perfectly operating HD, with the 3 partitions I told you about working perfectly. Then, in an attempt to get the "Red X" to disappear from my Sound Icon in the Task Tray, I tried reinstalling Windows 7. The first few tries failed for some reason. It was those failed tries that I now imagine created the 'extra' partitions on my HD.

Like I said, we will know more once I download, run that Program and then post screen caps.

Thanks and be well!

P.S. This is the speed on an Ethernet connection directly to the modem!

This is my hard drive now, please help!

Hi Golden, and to anyone else following this post,

Attached is a screen capture of Partition Magic's picture of my HDD. Can you please tell me how to 'fix' it?

Thanks!

~Antonio

When you reinstalled Windows 7 it looks like you deleted the other partitions, so now the situation has changed to one where you have a single partition called C: - have you noticed that it is almost full?

I'm sure what you want to fix, since the situation has completed changed? Your disk has a 1TB capacity right? The other partitions no longer show - how did you delete them?

Hard Drive Still Messed Up

Hi Golden,

My HDD capacity is about 120GB TOTAL. I have not done anything to 'repair' it, as you can see from the attached Windows Disk Management screen capture.

What I want to do is combine all of the unused space into a single partition on the HDD. Can you please tell me the best way to do this? I appreciate your help!

Thanks!

Use this to combine the unallocated space:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/93322-partition-wizard-use-bootable-cd.html

What do you want to do with the other partitions without drive letters? Have you ever installed Linux onto this hard disk?

Are those snips of the same PC? One shows you have 1217GB of space and the other 111.79. Can't be the same disk.

Thanks for the help!

Hello Golden, and Britton30,

Both of the screen captures are of 1 HDD of about 120GB TOTAL CAPACITY. I do NOT have any Linux partitions.

These 'garbage' partitions were created when I was attempting to install Windows 7 from the Microsoft Windows 7 32 bit disk, which I had successfully performed before. For some reason, on this latest install, it would not 'take' the Windows format of the partition, and therefore, I had to keep trying before I was able to finally get the C: partition working that you now see is my working windows partition.

I want to delete all other partitions, besides the working one, and then combine them back into a full working partition of the total size of the HDD. What is the best way to accomplish this, given that the 'snips' are not seemingly valid, as they add up to way more space than I actually have?

Thanks, to both of you!

Following the PW tutorial should help you with all of that.

Use Partition Wizard to delete all the partitions you do not want. From the resultant unallocated space, create a single Primary partition. Now merge this new Primary partition into the existing System partition.

The tutorial shows clear examples of how this is done.

Reinstalling Windows was the Only Option

Hi Guys,

Apparently, my HDD was too far 'fragmented' to fix. I tried the PW steps in the order you gave them, but then my system would no longer boot into my C: Windows partition.

So, I reinstalled Windows, which was a blessing itself, because it fixed a problem that had gone unfixed by a prior re-installation of Windows: The blasted "RED X" on the Speaker Icon in the Task Tray, with 'No Audio Device Installed' error message.

I am in the process of reconfiguring my new setup, and it seems that the sound is now working. I am just hoping that it continues to do so.

Take good care, and thanks again for all your help!

Maybe you should do a HDD test, fragmentation should not matter.
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