Half My Drive Disappeared?!? Please Help!!

Hey guys, wondered if any of you would be able to help me out. I wanted to reformat my 250GB hard disk, however I had 80GB worth of data I didn't want to lose. Using Disk Director, I created an 80GB partition called "backup" (which was known as my F:\ drive) and then reformatted my C:\ partition using the Windows XP setup routine. Now I have a completely clean 124GB partition called C:\ but that's all; my computer genuinely thinks I only have a 127GB hard disk and I can't find any trace of my backup partition, or the data on it! , any help would be much obliged because I'm genuinely stumped. Thanks in advance!

 

Can you post a screenshot of what Windows Disk Management shows and what DD (in Manual Mode) shows for the drive?

Have you tried the Recover Partitions Wizard in DD to see if it finds the "backup" partition?

I would post the screenshots first before you try the Recovery Wizard (if you haven't already). It will help to see how Windows and DD see the disk before any "recovery" tools are run.

If you need help creating and posting screenshots, see this post and this post.

 

Here are the screenshots buddy; I've actually got 125gig that's disappeared into thin air, . Even the recover partitions wizard did nothing!

 

Thought I'd post this too just in case it helps anyone understand what the hell is going on with my PC, LOL. My drive is a Maxtor 7L250S0, and the specs can be seen here: http://www.superwarehouse.com/Maxtor_DiamondMax_10_250GB_Hard_Drive/7L250S0/ps/623138

It's definitely 250GB!

And this is what Windows Device Manager throws up:

 

This is a long shot but it may be applicable to your set-up (if not please ignore).

SP2 overcomes the 137 gig barrier on older machines (Disk Management shows less than 137 gigs).

My machine shows approx. this size UNTIL I add SP2 (older box): IF your machine is older perhaps SP2 didn't download right or is corrupt. (I have reinstalled SP2 to correct corruption but I always had a backup. Uninstalling SP2 and reinstalling it might take longer than reinstalling XP and SP2 depending on your hook-up speed).

EDIT: The barrier is 137 GB (128GB binary, thus the 130 GB approximation as referred to by many). Also SP1 is also supposed to be able to break this barrier. Microsoft's knowledge base has documentation on large disk support that is extraordinarily complex to understand for me but if you want to try search their site).

 

mattyb,

You might also check the computer's BIOS and see if it reports the drive model and size correctly.

 

In addition to the BIOS, what does DD report from the boot CD? Does it see two partitions?

 

Problem solved, . Turned out as soon as I installed SP2, even though Windows displayed my drive through my computer as still being 125gig, in Windows Disk Management and DD there was another mass of space shown unallocated! After running the DD partition recovery wizard all my data's back too. Thanks so much for your help guys, really appreciated it. This one proper stumped me.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!​

 

It's great to hear you had success. Thanks for posting back with the details.

Now that you have your data back you should make a backup of it and save it somewhere else, just in case.