Main drive partition reading as "System Reserved" partition

HunterjWizzard said:

There ya go, hope thats a little more helpful. Basically, as far as my understanding, Disk 3 should have 3 partitions on it instead of two. Also that partiton should have a lot more on it, according to the user he had about 80 gigs free beforehand.

What's very curious is that the upper-part of the DISKMGMT display shows that I ("system reserved") partition as its normal expected 100MB size, with 3/4 of it free. That's right, since the BOOTMGR program isn't large. Actually I would also have expected to see a BOOT.INI file there and it's not, but the upper display seems reasonable... if that truly were a "system reserved" partition. Plus, it's "active", which again is consistent.

As to why the lower part of the GUI presentation appears as it does, well that's quite a mystery.

Just in passing, do you have Partition Wizard available? If not, please download and install the free Home Edition. You can also download and burn the ISO for standalone boot CD, but that's for another time. Just for now I'd like to see you run the installed Win7 version of PW and post a screenshot of what it thinks is on that drive and those two partitions.

Also, PW has an "explore partition" function (on the left side), so if you could also click on that for each I and J and post screenshots, I'm most curious as to what the very smart Partition Wizard has to say about these two partitions.

Curiously, the 298.09GB size of this mysterious Disk3 shown in the lower part is actually the same size as that of your My Book external drive.

Might be a WinXP oddity.

I'd be more inclined to trust Partition Wizard under any circumstances. Awaiting your screenshots from PW.

Ok, most of what you're looking at and commenting on are drives that are unrelated. The only hard drive that's important here is Disk 3, I currently have it plugged in to my workstation which is running Windows XP.

Disk 3 is the only disk that is important here, ignore the rest. Just Disk 3 and the I:\ and J:\ drives.

HunterjWizzard said:

Ok, most of what you're looking at and commenting on are drives that are unrelated. The only hard drive that's important here is Disk 3, I currently have it plugged in to my workstation which is running Windows XP.

Disk 3 is the only disk that is important here, ignore the rest. Just Disk 3 and the I:\ and J:\ drives.

I understand that it is Disk3 to be concentrated on. But the other anomalies in the display are just that... anomalies, and should at least be noticed and commented on.

Do you have that Disk3 plugged in through a USB adapter? I'm still trying to guess as to where the DISKMGMT confusion is coming from, since your MyBook drive is also 298.09GB just like the claim for this problem drive.

How big is the problem Disk3 drive for real?

Can you install Partition Wizard and open it, and post the screenshot of what it thinks of your drives? And also the "explore partition" function from it for each of the two partitions, to contrast against what Windows Explorer in WinXP claimed for I and J.

Here is the Partiton Wizard screen shot:



Very useful program, that. It looks like its just not showing the main partition at all.

The anomolies are because I'm multi-tasking quite a bit, I have at least 3 unrelited crisis going at any given time. The problem drive(disk 3) is plugged in via a USB adapter and exhibits the exact same behavior and every computer tried so far. It is actually a 298gb drive(sheer coincidence that its the same size as athe mybook, and it was having this issue before being plugged into the same machine)

I:\



J:\



Partition Wizard seems to reveal a few fun facts, mainly the big partiton with everything on it just appears to be missing entirely!

HunterjWizzard said:

Partition Wizard seems to reveal a few fun facts, mainly the big partiton with everything on it just appears to be missing entirely!

EDIT: never mind about the "orange" comments from earlier. The "selected" drive is always an orange background. It has nothing to do with "spanned", which would be an orange partition... not an orange background. Sorry for the confusion. Please disregard my comments above.



Nevertheless, it sure does look like the two partitions are truly (I) "system reserved", and (J) "recovery partition". The real OS partition, if it was supposed to be in the rest of the space on that drive... well, it just looks like it's gone.

I mean it's GONE! Doesn't even show the rest of that 298GB drive as "unallocated"! Very odd.


Now, Partition Wizard does also have a "partition recovery wizard" on the left side of the screen. It is pretty clever at actually resuscitating a disappeared or corrupted partition, if possible.

It won't do anything for real unless you give it the go-ahead, but you might select that Disk3 drive in the PW GUI and then click on the "partition recovery" function on the left, and see what develops and/or what it finds and suggests.

I'm running a recovery option from Partition Wizard now, it looks like its found the missing partition and is showing it as lost or deleted, I think that may be the issue.

Edit: the drive is showing up as orange because I have it selected in the screenshot, just in case you were curious.

Ok, Now we're getting somewhere:



Thats the result of a "quick" scan. It will not allow me to select all 3 partitions, however. I can either select the 2 existing partitions or the 3rd discovered partition, so either way its telling me its going to delete some partitions.

Thanks for the help so far by the way, its progress.