D: drive not visible in explorer as well as Disk Management

[varuna5]

I have a 80GB HDD partitoned as C: & D:. I recently installed Windows 7. Although it installed perfectly, d: was not visible during setup. It is missing in the Windows Explorer. I tried diskmgmt.msc and the drive does not appear there.

Help would be appreciated.

 

[Brink]

Hello Varuna,

It sounds like Windows may have formated the complete HDD during installation. Please go ahead and post a screenshot of your Disk Management window showing your full HDD layout to see if it may be able to help ID the issue.

In addition, open an elevated command prompt, and type the following in bold below, and post a screenshot of the command prompt showing all of it. It's to see what it shows as well for what disks and partitions/volumes you have. You can just close the command prompt afterwards.

• diskpart (press Enter)
• list disk (press Enter)
• list volume (press Enter)

 

[varuna5]

Hi Brink,
I tried diskpart in windows 7.But it shows only the c: drive as disk 0. if I select drive 0 and list partition it shows nothing.A small problem. My brother in a hurry installed windows XP in the C: drive. But the D: is still missing. I am posting this screenshot from Windows XP. diskpart in windows XP is not working

 

[Brink]

While in Windows 7, what does it show for "list disk" and "list volume"?

If you have Windows 7 and XP installed on the same computer to dual boot with, and you can only see the current OS's HDD while booted in it, then you may have them set to not be able to see the other's HDD. This is normally done between XP and Windows 7 so as not to have Windows 7 restore points deleted everytime you startup into XP.

You might take a look at OPTION TWO in the tutorial below to see if your registry is set this way to prevent XP and/or Windows 7 from seeing the other.

System Restore Points - Stop XP Dual Boot Delete - Vista Forums

Hope this helps for now.

 

[varuna5]

Hi brink...Windows XP was installed on C: drive. D: drive contains data.I am not dual booting it with Windows 7

 

[Brink]

Ah, ok. It would then appear that your favorite brother just wiped out D as well when he installed XP.

 

[AddRAM]

Ya but even if he wiped it, it should still show in disk management. This is odd.

Could it possibly have something to do with the fact that C: was formatted using FAT32 ??

And now disk mgt will only show partitions formatted this way ?

I`ve only used NTFS with XP so I`ve never come across this.

 

[Brink]

I suppose that would depend on if the HDD was deleted until "unallocated space" that would also eliminate the D partition as well, then the HDD formatted by XP when installed.

 

[AddRAM]

Does the hard drive have jumpers that allow you to set a 32 GB cap ? Were they touched ?

Greg, where are you ? Shed some light for us.

 

[DavidE]

Maybe using bootable Partition Wizard would show something different that might help explain this ?

I'd give that a try to see what it shows.

 

[jumanji]

^Exactly my thoughts. But my choice will be the WinPE disk created by AOMEI Partition Assistant.(It has Partition Recovery too, but I think none has tried it so far.) Free Download Partition Magic Software & Partition Manager Freeware for Hard Disk Partition Management - AOMEI Partition Assistant Home edition Freeware.

If the third party partition tools do not help in identifying the problem, then I would suggest first Data Recovery using PhotoRec.

If data Recovery is accomplished with PhotoRec, then the OP can proceed with rewriting the partition table with Test Disk.

 

[varuna5]

I would have to say that when I installed win 7, the unallocated space was 12 MB not GB. Also I used a full NTFS format option. When my bro formatted it to FAT 32, the unallocated space remained the same. I tried mini partition tool wizard pro, the D: drive is still missing.

 

[AddRAM]

Make the bootable cd, drop it in , boot up the pc and see what shows up.

Partition Wizard Bootable CD allows user to manage partition directly with partition manager bootable CD.

 

[varuna5]

Okay...will give it a try.

 

[varuna5]

should I try "Rebuild MBR" or am I in dangerous territory.

 

[M Murdani U S]

in windows search disk management... u should find ur D drive. right click, change path/drive directory. it should work. my friend's laptop got this thing too...

u'r D drive's got the same directory with the new directory for win 7 thus, it's kind of conflict. change u'r D directory should work

 

[mitchell65]

Maybe using bootable Partition Wizard would show something different that might help explain this ?

I'd give that a try to see what it shows.

Hi and welcome to the forum
Did you not realise that you have replied to a post that is over 12 minths old?