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Windows Vista Hard drive not recognized by Vista, I'm in a mess!

Discussion in 'Legacy Windows' started by amrhailat, 2009/01/03.

  1. 2009/01/03
    amrhailat

    amrhailat Inactive Thread Starter

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    Hi, I hope you guys can help me. I am in a middle of a mess. I wanted to create a new partition on my 160GB laptop hard drive, other than the two that were already created. I used Partition Magic to create the partition not knowing that it's unsupported by Vista. So I lost the drive letter for one of my drives (D: drive). I googled for answered and downloaded a software that supposedly fixes this issue but it got worse and now my laptop doesn't recognize my hard drive. I tried to boot into Vista's repair disk but it doesn't show me my system drive (C: drive) so I can't restore my computer, and "startup repair" doesn't help either. I don't know what to do now, I'm stuck. I'll appreciate any help guys!
     
  2. 2009/01/03
    MitchellCooley Lifetime Subscription

    MitchellCooley Inactive

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    Try this google search. Take a look at the one labeled "lost drive D... ". I read through several and many have some good suggestions. I don't used partition magic so I can't help you with it but the links in the google search may point you in the right direction.
     

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  4. 2009/01/03
    mattman

    mattman Inactive Alumni

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    Hi and welcome to the BBS,

    From past experience, I don't use Partition Magic to make a partition. Resize, yes, but not make one. I don't think you will find MS "support" any third party resizing program, they warn about backing up your data when using their own (built-in) resizing system.

    If you don't have any luck, look for programs that will do data recovery, there are a few freeware ones available. After you have recovered your data, then you can try repairs or since it might "blow up" again at some later stage, zero (low-level) format and remake the partitions using Vista.

    The hard disk drive manufacturer's utilities can often "see" the partitions, but probably not be able to repair them (they might allow you to retrieve data using DOS). You can try backing up, then "updating ", the MBR.

    See if Partition Magic or the "fixing program" can delete the D: drive (it's empty, right?) and cross your fingers that Vista starts working again.

    Matt
     
  5. 2009/01/03
    amrhailat

    amrhailat Inactive Thread Starter

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    Thanks for your replies guys.

    That's what I did after I lost my drive, that's how I knew that it's not supported by Vista. I wish that only was my problem. I tried another software from some forums that supposedly fixed this issue but I might have misused it. As a result, my hard drive isn't recognized.


    No I don't want to delete my D: drive, it's not empty. Here is what I have tried so far:


    when I boot Acronis Disk Director 10.0 I get a message that says "Acronis Disk Director Suite has not found any hard disk drives." so I can't get anywhere from there.

    On the other hand, when I boot True Image Home 2009 I can see all my partition and for some odd reason my D: drive (lost one) is Fat32 instead of NFTS.

    when I boot Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2009, I see the partitions with my old D: (now oddly FAT32) as my new C: and for all the other partitions including my old system drive "C:" labeled as star * instead of a letter. This is what it looks like:

    N Vol. Type ___ File Sys._______ Size____ Used ___Free __Active __ Hidden
    0 C: Primary ___ FAT32 _______ 59.6Gb __52.0Gb _7.6Gb __No _______No
    1 *: Primary ____Free _________12.6Gb _________________No______ No
    2 *: Primary __Unformatted ____76.8Gb _________________ Yes _____ No

    I am able to mess (copy, delete, resize etc.) with numbers 0, 2, and 4. My old D: drive aka new C: drive now. Number 2 should've been my C: drive but it's not named now.


    I'm thinking maybe if I swap partition # 0 with 2 I can boot into vista. But I don't know how, and I'm not sure if it would work. I'll appreciate any help guys, thanks in advance.
     
  6. 2009/01/03
    amrhailat

    amrhailat Inactive Thread Starter

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    Sorry moderators, I probably posted multiple time.

    Anyways, I'm not sure this will help but when I start the boot corrector in Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2009 it tells me that there are no windows installations found. :/
     
  7. 2009/01/03
    raghukalyan

    raghukalyan Inactive

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    Dear friend,

    If I remember correctly, Vista has its own utility to partition or resize drives.
    let me get few things here:

    As someone else in this thread pointed out, first thing is get your MBR (Master Boot Record) right.

    For this you can use a DOS Bootable CD. Now boot your system with this CD, eventually you will end in A:\ prompt. Then do "fdisk /mbr ". Let us know if you have not followed this step.

    Guys, any better suggestions to help "amrhailat" are welcome.
     
  8. 2009/01/03
    mattman

    mattman Inactive Alumni

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    Edit: Give your posts quite a few minutes to get uploaded.

    That description "unformatted" would worry me.

    Fdisk /mbr was in the days of DOS based Windows. In NTFS based Windows it is to boot to the Recovery Console and run FIXMBR. I haven't run Vista boot recovery, I have only read about Startup Repair. Read "What happened to the Recovery Console" in Help and Support.
     
  9. 2009/01/03
    mattman

    mattman Inactive Alumni

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  10. 2009/01/03
    amrhailat

    amrhailat Inactive Thread Starter

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    See I can fix MBR through Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2009 but it doesn't help. It gives me the same message. About the "unformated" state, does that mean that I will HAVE to format it in order for it to be used. So if I copied my whole hard drive to an external would that help any?
     
  11. 2009/01/03
    mattman

    mattman Inactive Alumni

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    You won't be able to "copy" from an unformatted partition and when other software doesn't even see the partition, "unformatted" might not be correct either.

    Did you have much data on the drive that was not backed-up? If you are trying to save "the system" and not the data, I'm am not sure that I would trust any repairs that may be able to rescue it (as I said, I wouldn't feel secure that it might not "blow up" in the future).

    If it was a desktop computer and you mentioned that you have an external drive, the HDD could possibly be swapped with the internal, the OS installed on that drive and original HDD kept intact for "rescuing any data ". If your external drive has a 2.5" HDD, that may be possible (SATA or IDE?).

    If there was a magic "fixmbr ", that would be nice. Try checking through Mitchell's search. Search for and read about a program Undelete (not free), there was a partition recovery system in Norton Utilities and read about SpinRite. If you need to recover data, start checking for those data recovery programs.

    Matt
     
  12. 2009/01/04
    McTavish

    McTavish Inactive

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    Don’t do any formatting as that can completely destroy any possibility of recovering lost partitions. Don’t worry that Hard Drive Manager is not showing the drive letters as Windows would see them - this is normal.

    What was your original partition layout? Which partition did you split and which one did you create? What you have said along with your read-out from Hard Drive Manager is confusing. What was that other piece of software you used and what did you attempt with it? What make of laptop is it?

    McTavish.
     
    Last edited: 2009/01/04
  13. 2009/01/04
    amrhailat

    amrhailat Inactive Thread Starter

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    Thank you for attempting to help me McTavish.

    I originally had C: drive which had Vista, and an E: drive for Data. There was also another used up ~7GB partition that was hidden originally when I first bought my Asus G1S laptop (back up maybe?). I wanted to try out Windows 7 so I attempted to split my D: drive using Partition Magic after installing it (apparently this is what messed it up). After rebooting my D: drive was disappeared leaving me with the C: drive only. I googled around for help and downloaded a program called Test disk. Aftel analyzing my hard drive and rebooting it wouldn't turn on. I may have messed it up using Test Disk unintentionally but I can't boot into Vista and I have tjhe partitions I mentioned in my previous post.
     
  14. 2009/01/05
    McTavish

    McTavish Inactive

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    I have no personal experience with Asus I’m afraid, but your G1 should have come with 3 partitions. A 7gig recovery partition at the start of the drive, then the Vista partition and then a Data partition. Your current read-out from HDM seems to show that your recovery partition has been merged with the Vista partition and converted to FAT32. Then you have what I assume is the partition you created, then your data partition which is no longer showing as being formatted. If you have reported HDM correctly and your current three partitions are indeed in the order on the drive as shown, then you are indeed in a bit of a mess I’m afraid. I could not even begin to understand how you got there.

    If you have important data you need to recover then you should do no more yourself and seek the help of a real professional. Remove the hard drive and send it to a data recovery company, telling them exactly what you attempted in as much detail as you can remember. Due to the nature of the partition problems you now have I would recommend a company that really knows about partitions. Your average local shop or repair centre would be well out of their depth and just tell you it was unrecoverable. Someone like runtime.org would be my suggestion http://www.runtime.org/service.htm

    The recover system on your laptop would have been hooked into the MBR so that you could have pressed a key at bootup and started the Asus recovery and backup utility. If you had not already disabled this with your partitioning then you certainly would have when you used HDM 2009 to replaced the MBR. The thing is that some of these recovery systems use a custom MBR that define non standard partitions, which a conventional MBR will not recognise correctly. As I said I have no experience with Asus so can’t say if this could also be a part of your current problem.

    If you are not going to seek professional help then you should have recovery DVDs that will restore your machine to factory delivered state, but all data will be lost.

    I’m not an expert on data recovery but you could try some of the available file recovery apps that are around. That runtime.org site has some excellent tutorials on the subject. In my experience, with a lot of time and patience you will be lucky to recover 50% of your files and photos, and less than 10% of any video files. Your best chance is always to recover the partition as this can achieve 100% file recovery.

    What I would try is using HDM 2009 to delete the first FAT32 partition and then use the partition undelete feature to scan the free space for lost partitions. If you’re lucky it may find an NTFS partition starting about 7gigs into the drive. I doubt it would now find the original recovery partition, but there is a chance that the info it needs to see the original Vista partition is still intact. You could try creating a new 6gig partition at the start of the drive so that you can start the undelete scan past that point. Typically if there is a recoverable partition to be found it will only take a few moments to find it and then you can cancel out of the scan on the rest of the space. If the standard scan does not find anything then there is an option to do a deeper scan, but this will take many hours so make it an overnight task.

    If you do restore the partition use HDM to set it as the only Active partition and make sure it is not hidden. If it won’t boot then try the Boot-Corrector again.

    McT.
     
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