desperate problem with missing partitions and drive

[hxl7]

• I started using an external USB drive and backup program. It makes both Image and File backups
• I have 3 physical HD’s in my computer. 2 came with the computer and the 3rd was from a previous computer ( Drive H: )
• When I ran the backup program, it was, to my surprise, auto-configured to make an image of Drive H, but of course, it should make it for Drive C
• I contacted support for the backup drive and they said there was no way to change the drive and that it selected the first physical drive for the image backup
• I thought that odd since the two original drives, including drive C, naturally, came installed with the computer. The 3rd drive I added should not have been the 1st physical drive, but it should appear as Drive H, which it did. The drive name was correct, but the computer saw it as the first physical drive.
• So, I opened Disk Management and sure enough, Drive H: was listed at the top as Drive 0, along with it’s 3 partitions. Drive C was listed as Drive 1
• Wanting a workaround, I opened Explorer, right-clicked the drive H, clicked the Hardware tab, highlighted the drive, clicked Properties at the bottom, then the Driver tab, then the Disable button.
• Then, I restarted my computer, ran the backup on the external drive, and this time it configured itself to backup drive C instead of H. So far, so good.
• When it finished backing up, I reversed the above steps and Enabled drive H once again and rebooted
• Then I went back into Disk Manager and was horrified to only see one large partition for Drive H. The other 2 did not show up.
• How do I recover the other partitions???
• Now, after rebooting, the drive is missing entirely from Explorer, even though it shows in BIOS normally
  Please help.
  Thank you. -Bill

 

[SIW2]

Hi Bill,

Please post a screenshot of the disk management window

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-how-post-screenshot-seven-forums.html

 

[hxl7]

Hi Bill,

Please post a screenshot of the disk management window

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-how-post-screenshot-seven-forums.html

Thank you for your assistance:

 

[SIW2]

You appear to have a dynamic drive ( nominally 160gb ) in there .

The disk map may be useful -like this

 

[hxl7]

Sorry. Didn't know that could help. Thanks, again.

 

[SIW2]

It seems to have been changed to a dynamic drive - was it like that in the first place?

That's a bit awkward.

You will need third party app. to convert it back to a basic drive without data loss - there used to be a free app. called Partition Wizard 4.2 that would do it. The new Partition Wizard 5.2 doesn't have that feature.

 

[hxl7]

That drive was ported over to my current computer from my last computer. I really don't know if it has always been like that. I think it has been. It has always run just fine and still does, even right now. The only problem is that I am seeing only one partition instead of three.

I really appreciate you responding, but I don't understand your suggestion. How would converting to a basic drive solve my partition problem?

 

[whs]

An easy approach would be to delete the partition on disk5 and define a new basic partition - that is if you have no precious data there. If you cannot get to it with Disk Management, try http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html