Partition got deleted after Vista Install

I decided to install another instance of vista home.
So I extended my recover D: drive and made it extended logical. then I restarted pc and boot from vista oem cd. I formatted new drive during installation and put vista on drive D:. everything went fine but when vista was installed my primary c: disk became d: and vice verse. but the worst think is my ex C: drive with all data and original Vista is all empty apart from boot, and bootmgr folders and bootsect.bak file.

Any ideas why it happend and how to get it back? Any help is highly appreciated as I'm desperate to recover my 450GB of never backed up (stupid me) data. Thanks!

 

You wrote: "I formatted new drive during installation and put vista on drive D:" I'm not clear on this, exactly what this is. You had said that you made your D drive an extended logical partition and that it was a recovery parition. If after you made your recovery D: drive an extended logical partition, then when you ordered Vista to prepare that D: drive with a "formating order" for its installation, than I think Vista took charge of that D: drive and made it C Drive because all it knows is that's where I'm going to reside as a OS.
However, I'm not at all clear of the "I formatted new drive during installation..." Is that a new drive or that same D: drive that you extended as logical?

Anyway, as a start, I would see if DD recognizes the new C: drive and if the partitions can be restored, but the Mud Crab and others will likely have the best solution for you.

ClarenceJ

 

Hi, Thanks for the reply

There was a recovery drive D: that came with my dell computer. I extended it to 40GB and made it logical instead of primary. Then I booted pc from Vista OEM installation cd and clicked on format this new extended drive d:. i could not confuse it with c: as they have different sizes.
After vista installation C: appeared to be D: and empty except few system folders mentioned above. Strangely enough acronis DDS still shows 40GB drive D: (now C: ) where new vista is installed as logical.
I checked bcd records and windows boot manager resides on empty drive d: and boot loader is on the new drive C:.
I'm thinking now that i should have started installation from vista without booting from OEM cd.
Anyway I checked a couple of demo recovery tools and it seems that RecoveryFix can see the data so i might go for the full version and try to recover it. Do you know anything better or cheaper?

 

The Vista installation should not have erased or formatted the booting partition (your old C: partition) unless you told it to. For example: If you install Vista on an XP system, Vista doesn't format the XP partition. It just adds the booting files and takes over the booting of XP.

Vista will always assign C: to its partition. This is different from how XP does it. XP most likely would have assigned D:.

I don't think starting the Vista installation from Windows would have made a difference. I'm not even sure if you can install the OEM version that way.

I would recommend you recover the files you need using the method that works for you. I have only had to do that a few times and don't remember the names of the various programs I tried. Some worked and some didn't. I suspect that's the case for recovery software. Cost is always a factor, but you have to weigh it against the value of your data.

I've stated many times (as have others) that it is very important to create a backup image of the drive prior to making any partitioning changes. Even the simplest procedure can sometimes go wrong.

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As to what went wrong, the only thing that instantly comes into mind is that you may have caused a "mixed" Primary/Logical situation and Vista got confused. In many cases, the Recovery partition is located before the Windows Primary partition. By making this partition a Logical, you may have "mixed" the Primary Windows partition inside the Extended Partition Container. However, I'm not sure if that can happen with only two partitions. Are there any other partitions on the drive?

Can you post a screenshot of what Vista's Disk Management shows for your drive as well as a screenshot of what DD (in Manual mode) shows?

 

Interesting, I've just noticed that there is another 63MB drive appeared in the system. It doesn't have name and it says EISA configuration. I can't access it in explorer only windows disk manager and DD shows it.
I am not sure if it existed before.
Just a thought maybe vista for some reason chopped it from my c: braking partition table and mft records?
I can't add screenshots as the forum doesn't allow to upload local files.

Anyway it appears not as bad as i thought as it seems i will be able to recover my data. Thanks for your help