Oops! Partition Deletion in Disk Management

tjs4ever

Honorable
May 17, 2012
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10,710
I bought myself an Intel SSD drive as an xmas gift, and using an Acronis backup, "recovered" my OS files to my new disk - all went well. Some background info:

Previous disk was 500GB with 60GB C (OS) partition, ~400GB D (Data) partion, and a ~5GB T (workspace) partition. I also have a small seperate 80GB "R" (recovery) disk with diagnostic apps and such, and storage for my quarterly acronis images.

After my OS copied successfully, I attempted to delete my former C volume, and use the "expand" function in windows 7 to enlarge my D volume. Windows automatically converted to dynamic disk (due to number of partitions, I assume) which I didn't really want, so I deleted what I thought was just my C volume. I was wrong. I inadvertently deleted both my C and my D volumes. So now I have two RAW disks, both drive lettered as E, one 60GB, one ~400GB with a usable 5GB partition between them. As of this writing, both testdisk, and partition find and mount are searching for lost partitions. Find and mount is 39% complete a thorough search and has not found the 400GB partition. Arithmetic tells me that it probably won't find it at all. Testdisk... well... it's searching but I'm not sure what to do once the search is complete. I know I will have options for writing partition data, but am more than hesitant. Briefly ran EaseUS data recovery, it found some files, I even recovered a few (should I just use that?).

My question:

While my Acronis backups are for the 60GB C drive only, do they not contain the partiton info for the whole disk (MBR @ sector 1)? Can I use this somehow to repair the foolish waste of time I have caused myself? Should I attempt an Acronis "recover" of my former C drive with the hope it will restore partition layout for the whole disk, can I somehow read the partition info and write it manualy??

It's not quite 4AM here, I've been at this all night and am more than a little tired. Any advice would be appreciated at this point.

-Doh!

T.J.
 

tjs4ever

Honorable
May 17, 2012
132
0
10,710
So a sleepless night and:

Find and Mount couldn't locate the D drive. Testdisk said D was unrecoverable, but Easeus and iCare data recovery were equally adequate for recovering my lost files. There were some garbage, corrupt and RAW files recovered as well, so I had the task of going through everything, but the important stuff seems intact.

I didn't get the exact answer I was looking for, but the problem is resolved nonetheless, thanks dodger! PS - I've read that a clean install is reccommended especially because I'm moving from a mechanical to a SSD drive, supposedly noticeable performance gains. Is this myth?
 

Not aware of 'significant' improvements in performance with a clean install, but I'm sure it's not a bad idea to routinely achieve anyway. Meanwhile a link which I fouind most informative and useful for SSDs
http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guide-2/