Missing unallocated space

[trivialusername]

Greetings
I have an external hard drive. Today I created a virtual hard drive on it using the Windows Disc Manager and everything worked fine. I then decided I need the VHD bigger, so I deleted the first one and tried merging the unallocated space with the external drive's partition. The "extend" option, however, was greyed out. I restarted and the unallocated space went missing, and the "extend" option for the hard drive's partition remained grey. Rescanning the drives seems to have no effect. I did some reading but was not able to find something useful. The drive has 1 TB of info that I have nowhere else to store, so formatting is not an option currently. Any ideas what to do?
Thank you

 

[vesp3r]

You can try with Partition magic or insert windows cd and when you are popped up to chose drive where to install windows you should be able to see the unallocated spase

 

[trivialusername]

Just installed partition magic. When starting it said there was some error so I clicked "fix". The program did not start anyway, said it was incompatible with my version of Windows. Now I cannot see one of my other partitions...I have a hard drive which had two partitions - D: and E:. In the windows Disc Manager I can see the space but it has no letter on. When I try to assign a letter on it, a message that reads "The operation failed to complete because the Disc Management console view is not up-to-date. Refresh the view...If the problem still persists, close the Disc Management console, then restart Disc Management or restart the computer.
Needless to say, none of these worked...
Btw this is not the drive I first asked about - this one is internal, I still can see one of its partitions and I still can see the external one. However, I cannot see the unallocated space on the external one and I cannot assign a letter on the rest of the internal one...

 

[vesp3r]

@@
ok thats something i never heard of...whats your OS, can you access the drive w/o letter? Did you try the windows cd to allocate disk space?

 

[trivialusername]

It's Windows 7 Ultimate
I do not have access to the disc, can get it tomorrow.
I do not see the partition in windows explorer, so - no, I cannot access it. I see C: - my system drive on a separate SSD, D: - the first partition of my external HDD, and F: - my entire external HDD without the space I used for the VHD. In the disc manager, I see the space that used to be E:, but cannot see the unallocated space left after the deletion of the VHD

 

[vesp3r]

Try using diskpart to assign a drive letter to Disk #0, Partition #1.
Click Start Orb > type diskpart
Right-click diskpart in results above > click Run as administrator
Once diskpart loads type list volume, press enter
You should notice that you will see your partition that you use for your data, it should not show a drive letter assigned to it.
Type select volume n (replace n with the volume number assigned to the partition in question)
Type assign letter X (replace X with the letter that you want to assign to it)
Hope this helps

 

[trivialusername]

I cannot see it there, either.

 

[vesp3r]

you cant see the unallocated space or the drive that have no letter?

 

[trivialusername]

Both

 

[vesp3r]

hmmm can you see it under safe mode? Also can you link pics of the disk manager (full screened) and the diskpart list?
I just google`d the problem and it sais sometimes detaching and reattaching the drive does the "magic"

 

[trivialusername]

I am pretty sure the "fix" that partition magic did, did this...
Everything is the same in safe mode, here are the screenshots

 

[trivialusername]

Hello again. I did some reading too and the opinion about partition magic is mostly negative, to say the least. As a matter of fact, it has been withdrawn by its developers which... By that I do not mean that I am not the idiot who did all this, but maybe you should reconsider recommending it so easily in the future.

Anyway, I downloaded another tool - TestDisk
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Main_Page

I followed the instructions on their website but am still not sure what to do
Here's what's up:

When I "analyse" the hdd, this is the result:

I then choose quick search and this is what I get

When I list the files under the first partition, which is listed as * - primary bootable, I see the files that are on D: - the first partition on the hdd, which is visible anyway.
When I list the files under the second partition, which is listed as P - primary, I see the files that are on E: - the other partition on the hdd, that went missing.

What should I do next?

 

[vesp3r]

hmmmm then im trully sorry for recommending that prog to you... i was using it on my old pc some time ago and it was still good back then, maybe i shold read about those progs more often 😛
well when you list your files on the missing partitions you have to go go back to the previous menu (by pressing q) and then hit enter
If your partitions are listed there correctly go to Write menu to save changes.
If it still doesnt show go to the menu Deeper search and follow this guide: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step#A_partition_is_still_missing:_Deeper_Search