missing hard drive, please help

[y0ssar1an22]

hello. i dont really know too much about computers so i hope this thread is in the right place and if so that i get some help.
basically when i go into 'my computer' the 250gb hard drive is there however the 2gb(i think) 'mini hard drive' has disappeared. i presume this contains vital system info. i already tried a system restore but i dont know how long ago the drive went missing.
any help would be greatly appreciated.
thanks

 

[theog]

Can you post a screen shot of Disk management?
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Use Snipping Tool to capture screen shots

 

[y0ssar1an22]

first of all thanks for the reply. heres the screen shot.... hope you can help

 

[whs]

1. the partition you are looking for has no drive letter. That is why you do not see it on Computer. You can assign a drive letter in Disk Management (right click), but there does not seem to be much in it.

2. you have a curious setup with the bootmgr in the recovery partition. That in itself is not serious, but your system boot now depends on this partition. This is a bit unusual - to say the least. Any idea how the bootmgr could have gotten there?

 

[dsperber]

1. the partition you are looking for has no drive letter. That is why you do not see it on Computer. You can assign a drive letter in Disk Management (right click), but there does not seem to be much in it.

Well... not until he does a FORMAT to NTFS for the partition, since there's no file system on it at the moment!

And of course, FORMAT will lose what's on the partition, which if there previously was something worthwhile on that partition it will certainly be disappeared by FORMAT.

Now it's 2GB, which is not tiny. It's fairly large. So what was on it before? Did it ever have a drive letter before it recently vanished?

Very odd.. to show "active" on what's called the Recovery Partition, and now this 2GB partition doesn't have a file system!

 

[SIW2]

Those oem partitions are normally reported by Disk Management as empty. They often don't have drive letters assigned.

Looks ok to me.

Very sensible to have Recovery partition as system - good to see Dell doing that.

 

[whs]

1. the partition you are looking for has no drive letter. That is why you do not see it on Computer. You can assign a drive letter in Disk Management (right click), but there does not seem to be much in it.

Well... not until he does a FORMAT to NTFS for the partition, since there's no file system on it at the moment!

And of course, FORMAT will lose what's on the partition, which if there previously was something worthwhile on that partition it will certainly be disappeared by FORMAT.

Now it's 2GB, which is not tiny. It's fairly large. So what was on it before? Did it ever have a drive letter before it recently vanished?

Very odd.. to show "active" on what's called the Recovery Partition, and now this 2GB partition doesn't have a file system!

Good catch. I overlooked the missing format. It is most likely formatted in FAT - but that does not help. And it most likely has data in it. With Partition Wizard he may see it. Best Free Partition Manager Freeware for Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition.

 

[theog]

Warning: Messing around with the two Dell Recovery Partitions, can make them UNUSABLE.