Second hard disk drive no longer accessible.

[Henadin]

Hello! I have two drives(C:, D. I booted up my computer one day and 'D:' was no longer available. I'm not too savvy with partitions or how they work, but I'd like to recover the data lost on the other drive if possible. If not possible, I want to be able to save new files on that partition which includes around 100 gb of space. Any help is great! Let me know if you need more info to help. Thanks!

 

[TVeblen]

It is very helpful if you can post a screen shot of the disk management window - stretched so we can see everything - so we can see what is going on.

There is a big difference between having 2 partitions C&D on one hard disk, and having 2 hard disks one C one D.

 

[Henadin]

Attached is the screenshot

 

[TVeblen]

Mmm. That's different.

I assume the 168.56 GB partition is the one that is supposed to be D.

Can you do this:

• Right click on that partition and then click on Properties
• At the top of that window there is a text box and I'm going to guess it says "Recovery Partition" > highlight that and backspace to erase it.
• Then Right click on that partition again and then click on "Change Drive Letter and Paths"
• Give the drive a letter. D if you can.

Let's see what happens there.

 

[Henadin]

Thanks for your continued help. I right clicked and properties are not available. I right click and the only option is 'help'

 

[TVeblen]

I don't want to tell you to do anything that may cause data loss. I'm going to check some things and ask for more eyes on this if I can.

 

[Henadin]

I appreciate it. I have no irreplacable data on that drive, but I'd like to keep what is on there. If there is no other way, I will not be devastated with formatting the drive, as long as I can save files there in the future.

 

[gregrocker]

I would install Partition Wizard to right click on the partition to Explore to see if you can see your data.

It's possible it's partition type has been changed somehow to a restricted OEM Recovery which won't allow access via DIsk Mgmt. But from PW you should be able to rightclick on the partition to see its contents and assign a Drive letter so you can access your data.

If there are any more restrictions they can possibly be resolved by changing it's partition type, also using PW. We have experts here who are advanced enough to help do this.

 

[Henadin]

Thanks Greg. I installed Partition Wizard. Now when I right click on my partition I receive only these options, "Explore" being grayed out.

How should I continue?

 

[gregrocker]

Try browsing in with bootable Win7 installation media or System Repair Disk
to Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console.

This should ignore the restrictions imposed by the Recovery partition type in Windows.

 

[Henadin]

Okay. I will try this tomorrow when I have a disk to use. Thank you.

 

[Henadin]

Trying my luck with the recovery disk. Thank you for your continued help

 

[dsperber]

Just out of curiosity, what happens if you try to use the "partition recovery wizard" function available using Partition Wizard that you've now installed? What does it find?

Does it discover your original 168GB D partition on that drive which is currently showing as a "healthy recovery partition of 168GB" in your screenshot?

In other words you currently show TWO recovery partitions, so somehow D got mis-marked. I wonder if PW's "partition recovery wizard" has anything to say about what it currently sees?

 

[Henadin]

Just to update you all, I found that the process of copying over all my files within the boot disk as was suggested was not worth all the time I would have spent. I deleted the partition, then used the unallocated data and combined it with my C: partition. Now I have a new problem, the partition was deleted, not formatted meaning the files are still there I believe but inaccessable and unformattable in the situation the partitions are now. Should I create a new thread for this new problem? Thanks again.

 

[gregrocker]

If you had asked back we could have given you other options to copy out your data which might not have been as slow. It may have also been possible to change the OEM Recovery partition type so that the data could be accessed again once we knew it was there.

If you've now deleted the partition and Extended C over it, then C has most likely quick formatted the space and the data is much harder to recover.

Please post back another screenshot of Disk Mgmt, tell us what you would like to do now.