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Recently removed Ubuntu, 2nd HD Disappears (Asus G74sx)
Hey everyone!
I recently went through the painful process of removing the Ubuntu partition from my primary hard drive, then having GRUB problems, then booting BACK into Ubuntu on a USB stick and resetting the MBR to boot Windows. All is well: that partition is gone and GRUB no longer exists, and I can boot into Windows just fine. However, now that I've done that, I notice that my second hard drive, which I normally use for storage of data, has disappeared.
When I say 'disappeared', I mean that I can't find it in Windows Explorer, and nor can I find it in the Disk Management program I used to remove the Ubuntu and GRUB partitions. It used to be that I had three disks: Disk 0 (my primary hard drive with Windows 7 and formally Ubuntu on it, as well as my recovery partition Asus puts in), Disk 1 (the storage drive that's now gone), and the CD-ROM drive that I don't have anything on. Now, I only see the Disk 0 and CD-ROM drive.
I didn't have any data on it that I don't have elsewhere, so recovering the data itself is not a problem. The problem lies in the fact that this drive was nearly 700GB, versus my primary HD which is 400GB and almost completely full, and I want the access to that extra space.
The process I went through to uninstall Ubuntu and GRUB:
1. Remove the partition for Ubuntu on Disk 0, make it unallocated space
2. Boot back into Ubuntu from USB without installing it again onto my hard drive (the "Try Ubuntu" mode)
3. Open up the Terminal, and type: sudo lilo -M /dev/sda mbr (after installing the lilo package)
4. Restart computer
5. Boot to sda1, which is my Recovery partition. Instead of actually loading that partition, it also gave me an option to go to the actual Windows 7 loader, which is what I'm on now
6. Successfully started Windows 7 loader doing that
What I'd like to do is the following:
- Confirm that I've done everything I can to remove GRUB and Ubuntu
- Restore the presence of my 2nd hard drive so I can access and use it
- Be sure that I've properly restored the Windows boot loader... is there anything else I should do from Windows (I'm honestly scared to restart my computer..) to make sure that the next time I restart it won't go to the Recovery partition, but rather to Windows 7 Loader directly?
Thank you to ANYONE who helps me out on this. This computer is extremely important to me, and I really need to make sure this gets fixed. I'm not experienced enough with any of this to do it properly and I feel like I've gotten myself into a deep hole that I cannot get out of. Anyone who can provide me a rope to get out and save myself from potentially screwing myself over on this computer, I GREATLY APPRECIATE YOU!
Thanks in advance for reading this!!