Need help with hdds

[JeepnDave]

Someone please help!!!

I installed a new mobo (Asus P5G41T-MLX) and now only two of my partitions from 4 different drives are accessible. Please see screen shot of Disc Management to see what I mean. If you notice five other partitions show in disc management but I can't assign a drive letter to any of them and they show 100% free space. None of these partitions were empty before I changed the mobo. I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. Disk 0 and Disk 1 are IDE Drives and Disk 2 and Disk 3 are SATA drives.

 

[theog]

For a start, Windows is install to disk 3, partition 1. C:

 

[dsperber]

Did you do a brand new from-scratch Win7 install to go along with your new motherboard? I would have thought so.

It's interesting to note that all of your problem partitions are "primary". Only your one extended partition with a "logical" partition inside of it is visible and usable.

That one "logical" partition and also your C partition (with Win7 on it) is NTFS, and thus has a drive letter. The other partitions show "no file system" so not being able to assign a drive letter is not a surprise.

It's unclear how you got Win7 installed directly to that primary partition on drive 3 which is also marked as "active" (as it should be if there is no "system reserved", as there doesn't appear to be). Was this an old WinXP or Vista partition?

Interesting. I assume your Disk3 is shown in your BIOS as "hard disk #1"? Can't imagine any other way for Win7 to install there. Did you set the BIOS in your new ASUS mobo to point to that drive as "hard disk #1" before you installed Win7?

Still not sure how you got the install to go there, and no "system reserved" created... on a fresh Win7 install.

Did you change IDE/SATA cables on your drives after Win7 was installed?

 

[JeepnDave]

What difference does that make if the computer will boot?

 

[dsperber]

What difference does that make if the computer will boot?

Obviously, the computer can boot. But only the C "primary" partition (on Disk3) is visible, plus I (the one "logical" partition) on Disk0.

This is all very odd, and I'm just thinking out loud. How did that one partition get lettered as I, unless all the other missing primary partitions had been assigned conceptual letters as well? There are five missing "primary" partitions (D, E, F, G, H, presumably) so that the "logical" partition of I at least looks plausible.

So why are those "primary" partitions that seem to have gotten letters now showing as no file system, and no letter?

I'm just thinking out loud.

 

[JeepnDave]

About a year ago I was running XP Pro and upgraded to Win 7. During the upgrade Win 7 was installed on the now C: drive. About 3 weeks ago my old mobo quit working so I bought this new one, and I wanted to get back up and running quickly so I ran the Win 7 repair CD. Which let me boot back into Win 7 but would not let me access most of the other drives. Is there anything I can do to make these drive/partitions usable again with out doing a fresh install of Win 7?

 

[JeepnDave]

Drive letters E: and F: are my CD and DVD drives.

 

[JeepnDave]

Drive letters used to be (to the best of my memory)
C: 48.83gb
D: 26.55gb
(E: & F: CD & DVD)
H: 232.88gb
I: 439.24gb
J: 179.17gb
K: 4.88gb
M: 86.27gb

 

[seavixen32]

What was on these drives?

The fact there there is nothing in Disk Management to indicate what file system they're using suggests they're waiting for a quick format before you can use them.

 

[dsperber]

Well, since you can manually re-letter anything any way you want (including your CD/DVD drives), the actual letters don't need to be sequential. All that matters is how many partitions you have, plus CD/DVD drives, plus card readers etc., and each will get a letter assigned... which you can obviously then change.

So we're really just concerned at the moment with why those partitions have seemingly become inaccessible. Presumably all of these partitions WERE formatted as NTFS and contained real data, before becoming inaccessible as a result of the motherboard swap and subsquent "repair".

Also, I think you've now explained how you ended up with that primary partition on Disk3 being your C partition, and "active", and no "system reserved". You upgraded WinXP to Win7 about a year ago and have been running that way ever since.


Now... are you saying that when your old motherboard died, you bought a new one? Was the old motherboard the same as the new one or not? Normally, if you make a hardware upgrade as significant as a totally new motherboard it is strongly recommended that a fresh from-scratch Win7 install be performed, but apparently whatever "repair" you did managed to at least get you up and partially working.

So, you did NOT do a fresh Win7 install when the new motherboard was installed, but rather used the system repair approach and perhaps "restored a system image" to this C partition? Or was it some other type of "repair" from the system recovery options menu?

Or if you did something other than what I'm imagining, exactly what did you do with the repair method to get yourself back up and operational once the new motherboard was installed?

 

[JeepnDave]

The old mobo was an ASUS P5KPL-CM. Before the old mobo quit working I had read that you needed to have a Win 7 repair disk because the Win 7 install disk does not have the repair like the XP install disk had. So I had burned a Win 7 repair CD and that is what I used to repair Win 7 and get it working to this point. All of the drives were NTFS format.

 

[dsperber]

The old mobo was an ASUS P5KPL-CM.

And the new mobo is an ASUS P5G41T-MLX.

Looking at them, they appear fairly similar, although the P5KPL has a G31/ICH7 chipset and runs with DDR2 memory, and the P5G41T has G41/ICH7 and uses DDR3 memory. Did you also get new memory, or just transplant the old memory?

Also, the old board has Intel GMA3100 graphics, and the new board has Intel GMAX4500 graphics.

Also, the new audio uses a Realtek ALC887 audio chip, whereas the old audio was based on VIA VT1708B.

I'm still quite surprised you had no problems simply using your existing previously installed system with your new significant hardware change and Win7 "repair", and that it booted as far as it got.

Myself, I'd use the hardware upgrade opportunity (mobo, chipset, memory, audio, video) to freshly install Win7 from scratch... but that's just my own preference, and I do realize it would take a few days to get everything back in business. But I also feel it would guarantee stability with the dramatic hardware change,

Honestly, I'm quite surprised you didn't have even more difficulties.

Did you make sure that you'd marked what DISKMGMT shows as "Disk3" as "hard disk #1" in the new BIOS? I imagine you had to, even though it's odd that it would get shown as DISK3. Maybe that's just the result of the particular SATA (or IDE) connector you used for connecting that drive to the new mobo controller socket.

Before the old mobo quit working I had read that you needed to have a Win 7 repair disk because the Win 7 install disk does not have the repair like the XP install disk had. So I had burned a Win 7 repair CD and that is what I used to repair Win 7 and get it working to this point. All of the drives were NTFS format.

The repair features that are available separately on the Win7 repair CD are also available by booting to the Win7 installation DVD itself, and selecting the "repair an existing system" wizard. It will produce the same menu of recovery options either way.

Nevertheless, I'm still puzzled as to exactly what "repair" really did?

Obviously, this didn't turn out quite as you'd expected. I would think there's really nothing been done to the drives themselves, insofar as losing data... but until you get a truly working system again it's hard to judge. But I wouldn't think anything like that happened.


How about doing a fresh install? Do you have an external USB drive you can use for backing up what is in your current C-drive, at least for \Users data and \ProgramData, etc.?

Do you have another brand new empty hard drive you could freshly install to, and then copy data from your exiting Disk3? It would look a bit different (i.e. there would be a new 100MB "system reserved", along with the C partition for Win), but that's a minor difference. This could at least be an "experiment", just to ensure that you really hadn't lost anything in those other partitions.

I suspect that if you rebuilt a brand new Win7 partition using your new hardware and Intel chipset drivers and Realtek audio drivers, that those other partitions would reappear as normal NTFS drives.

 

[theog]

Drive letters used to be (to the best of my memory)
C: 48.83gb
D: 26.55gb
(E: & F: CD & DVD)
H: 232.88gb
I: 439.24gb
J: 179.17gb
K: 4.88gb
M: 86.27gb

Was C: Disk0 - Partition 1?

 

[dsperber]

Drive letters used to be (to the best of my memory)
C: 48.83gb
D: 26.55gb
(E: & F: CD & DVD)
H: 232.88gb
I: 439.24gb
J: 179.17gb
K: 4.88gb
M: 86.27gb

As I map things shown in your screenshot, the arrangement lines up as follows:

OLD C: 48.83GB
NEW C: 48.83Gb (Disk3, primary "active" partition 1)

OLD D: 26.55GB
NEW ?: 26.55GB (Disk0, primary partition 1)

OLD H: 232.88GB
NEW ?: 232.88GB (Disk2, primary partition 1)

OLD I: 439.24GB
NEW I: 439.24GB (Disk0, logical partition 1 inside of primary partition 2, i.e. "extended partition")

OLD J: 179.17GB
NEW ?: 179.17GB (Disk3, primary partition 2)

OLD K: 4.88GB
NEW ?: 4.88GB (Disk3, primary partition 3)

OLD M: 86.27GB
NEW ?: 86.27GB (Disk1, primary partition 1)

 

[JeepnDave]

I have removed the old M: 86.27gb drive and put it in an external enclosure and then plugged it back in through USB, the computer detects the drive and loads the drivers but still show the same in Disk Management. So something has had to happen to these partitions. Any ideas?

 

[dsperber]

I have removed the old M: 86.27gb drive and put it in an external enclosure and then plugged it back in through USB, the computer detects the drive and loads the drivers but still show the same in Disk Management. So something has had to happen to these partitions. Any ideas?

I'd recommend using yet another method to try and explore what's on those partitions (fingers crossed it's actually a Win7 issue because of the "repair", rather than true damage to the partitions themselves).

Download and burn to CD the ISO for Partition Wizard's standalone boot CD.

You should also download the regular version of the program and install it under Win7 for possible future use.

The standalone boot CD is a Linux disc, having nothing to do with Win7.

Anyway, if you boot to the CD you'll be going through the same new motherboard but it seems like there's nothing inherently wrong with the new hardware. My own feeling is that the "repair" of trying to use the previously installed Win7 with the significantly changed basic hardware is more likely at fault here. Again, fingers still crossed that the partitions are not really damaged.

But with standalone Partition Wizard, you should be able to examine all of your other drives (but not the one you just transplanted into a USB enclosure, unless you put it back to being an internal drive). You can also EXPLORE the contents of each partition, at least to look at the folder/file structure.

If PW says they are NTFS and still contain your data, then you can breathe a sigh of relief. I'd then recommend installing Win7 again from scratch (onto that same Disk3 drive if you want, but we should discuss that process separately if you want to do it).

If PW says they are not formatted at all, then I'd say something bad has likely happened that only a FORMAT TO NTFS can fix. Got a backup of your data??

See what that turns out from Partition Wizard's look at your drives.

 

[JeepnDave]

Well what it turned out to be was that all of the partitions that I could not access were hidden. So with the help of Partition Wizard I was able to unhide them. But when I rebooted they would be hidden again. So I found that if I changed them to Logical partitions then they would not get hidden after a reboot. So now I am able to access all of my drives and Partitions from Win 7.

Thanks for your help!!!

 

[dsperber]

Well what it turned out to be was that all of the partitions that I could not access were hidden.

Wow! Wonder how that happened, as a result of the "repair" you did to Win7 after the new mobo install?

So with the help of Partition Wizard I was able to unhide them.

Just one of the many tools available with this excellent product.

But when I rebooted they would be hidden again.

Remarkable.

Quite a mystery, here. I had previously noticed and remarked in one of my earlier posts that they were all "primary", whereas your one still-visible partition was "logical". But it's still totally inexplicable to me why booting to Win7 would somehow make them hidden?

I have no idea how/why this would happen... never saw that before..

So I found that if I changed them to Logical partitions then they would not get hidden after a reboot.

Fascinating. Consistent with your I partition, which was also visible (inside of the "extended partition" on that drive"), but the mystery is still what is causing Win7 to hide those primary partitions. Why?

But again, yet another one of the valuable tools available in the PW bag of tricks to do just about anything you want to fix things using your own experience, creativity and logic.

In fact, I used PW just yesterday to convert a FAT32 partition to NTFS on my brother-in-law's old WinXP system to resolve another anomaly.

PW is an invaluable and dependable 3rd-party product, in my opinion... to help solve many issues with a very user-friendly GUI. It's never let me down.

So now I am able to access all of my drives and Partitions from Win 7.

Fantastic! Excellent solution!!!

And of course, this new configuration will still work just fine going forward, even if you do end up reinstalling Win7 from scratch sometime down the road.

Getting your partitions back and not losing any data was obviously the goal of the mission, and you have emerged victorious. PW is your friend.

Thanks for your help!!!

Glad to have been able to help.

I'm still honestly quite surprised that with your fairly dramatic hardware change that you were nevertheless still able to use your previously existing Win7 system, with just whatever "repair" did as well as what Win7 probably did when it first booted in the new hardware environment.

Again, just my own personal habits, but I would use the opportunity to do a fresh Win7 reinstall along with all your 3rd-party software products, etc.. I realize this is a nuisance, and time-consuming, and you need to be on your toes to preserve your data currently on your C drive, but given the situation you might just put it on the "to do" list.

Anyway, you've emerged victorious!


P.S. - hope you installed PW in your Win7 system as well, as it's very useful in that environment as well (and also shows the Win7-assigned drive letters, which do not appear in the standalone boot version).

If you need to do something which you set up while running Win7, that can't be done while Win7 is running, it will request a re-boot to complete the operation(s). At re-boot time it will kick in during pre-boot, and essentially look like the standalone boot CD appearance, except that it has been given the script for the remaining operation(s) that need to be completed before exiting and allowing the normal Win7 boot process to proceed.