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diskmgmt.msc tool deleted partition I did not specify!
I would appreciate help, please. In an odd occurrence, the built-in Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) tool deleted two parititions in one swoop; one I specified and one I didn't specify.
Background:
- Lenovo x200s laptop
- Seagate 500GB 2.5" hard drive
- Layout: Primary partition 50GB, Extended partition 4xxGB (whatever was left) ==> 4 logical partitions of 30GB, 150GB, 100GB, 135GB
- XP was on the primary partition
- I installed Windows 7 in November on logical drive #3.
- The XP primary partition remained unused for the past few months.
Today, I decided to reclaim some of the space. I used diskmgmt to try a few things. I was planning on dual-booting to linux or another Windows flavor, but I didn't want to use XP mode. I used diskmgmt to first shrink the primary 50GB volume; I did it a couple times, and then I decided it would be easier to delete the volume and create a new one with the sizes I wanted. So, on my 3rd operation on the 50GB partition, I deleted the volume. Immediately upon doing so, my 135GB logical partition #4 became "free space" (green color).
I think this may have something to do with the fact that I deleted the entire primary partition volume. But, it doesn't make sense why this operation would affect a partition on an extended partition.
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Fortunately, the partition was my "extra space" partition for temp files, but I did store all my downloaded programs and drivers for several computers, as well as computer backup images, etc. It would be a huge inconvenience to find all the misc drivers and programs I've gathered over the past few years. I would have rather lost my "pictures and videos" partition, since I have that backed up to an external drive!
I'm aware of file recovery software, but in the past those have usually returned lots of garbage files and mixed pieces of information.
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Any thoughts or suggestions?
Thank you in advance.