Disappeared Partition After Install

I'm using a 500GB hard drive that is split in to 2 partitions. The primary partition is 50GB, primarily for the OS. The second is the rest of the usable space on the drive, and has all the photos, documents, etc stored on the computer. Today I decided to finally install the Windows 7 RC that I've had sitting around. I moved over any important information on the C drive, the primary partition, over to the D drive, the larger partition, popped the disk in, and in setup, formatted the C drive. I finished the install without incident, but upon getting in to Windows 7, found my second, larger partition, had vanished.

I've seen similar problems described by other users by way of googling, and have attempted to do what they've done, using tools like Acronis Disk Director, Active Partition Recovery, Recuva, etc, and while they all seem to be able to identify that the drive is there, and even allow me to browse its contents, they are convinced there is no 'missing' partition to recover, and will not allow me to manually copy/paste files of interest from the problem partition to the C drive.


Is there any program that would allow me to copy paste like this, to make the drive accessible to Windows again, or proved any solution at all? Thanks for the help.

Wow, do I ever feel dumb. Been trying for two and a half hours now to resurrect the drive that never died. I didn't realize how to get to disk management in 7, it doesn't seem to be under start->all programs->accessories->system tools anymore.

Thank you very much Dinesh, you've saved me a great deal of frustration.

I did, sir. Everything's back the way it should be and running beautifully. Thanks again.

i hav same problem with truestatis. i try to same way and i resurrect my partition drive too. but it is empty! it show 100% free space. hav any solution? thank you

I have the same issue with a disappearing partition. I used diskmgmt to reassign the drive (D) to my recovery partition. It appeared no problem, until I reboot and the partition is gone again. I can do this procedure over and over. How do I get the recovery partition (D drive) to stay visible or boot everytime?

Hello,

I have the same problem, after recovering Windows 7 I have lost a partition of 200GB, and I cannot find it in diskmgmt

Could you please help?

Many thanks