Repair or Start Over after partition vanished

[TommyRandom]

Hi,

After logging in today, I discovered that a partition had vanished. (I set the partition up to store documents separately from application files.)
Loss of a small amount data (not yet backed up) on the missing partition is inconvenient, but not a disaster.

I am concerned about spending the time to repair the hard drive (through use of the Windows 7 installation disk), and then having this problem recur.

Here are the questions:

1. Beside the Windows Installation disk and its repair utilities, do you know of / can you point me toward any reliable utilities I could use to make repairs?

2. Should I just "cleanse" the drive and start from scratch?

3. While I am at it, are there any steps I should take that would prevent the vanishing partition problem in the future?

Thanks in advance.

 

[r_pad]

Thats odd, never heard of a vanishing partition!?

You can always run the command "chkdsk /x" on the drive that's giving you the problem. also what did you use to create the partition in the first place?

 

[henydiah]

install software Advanced Sytem Optimizer a: www.systweak.com/aso
fix your problem registry, Scandisk,

U must have Hiren CDBOOT : www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd
best sof Getd ataback, Partition tool

 

[TommyRandom]

Thats odd, never heard of a vanishing partition!?

You can always run the command "chkdsk /x" on the drive that's giving you the problem. also what did you use to create the partition in the first place?

I've never experienced a lost partition in the past, so this is a mystery to me. I set the partition up using Windows 7 64bit Professional Edition Disk Management. That involved shrinking the C: partition on the drive and adding a new one. By the way, when I view the disk properties on the drive, the C: partition and the system reserved area do not fill the entire available disk capacity. Anyway, I did apply the chkdisk system tool available in Computer Management - no errors were identified, nor did that fix the problem.

Mostly what I am looking for here is whether I should be concerned about the vanishing partition problem occuring in the future, best practices (if any) to prevent it OR is this simply a one time fluke that I should get past and forget about?

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[Jonmor68]

You didn't say how many partitions are shown in Disk Managment and if only one is there any unallocated space. Also how big was this partition.

 

[TommyRandom]

You didn't say how many partitions are shown in Disk Managment and if only one is there any unallocated space. Also how big was this partition.

In Disk Management:

When all was well, the 320 GB Disk was: 100mb System Reserved, C: 140 GB, E: 150 GB

After things went south, the 320 GB Disk was: 100mb System Reserved, C: 140 GB. No unallocated space.

 

[rgs80074]

hello tomyrandom

did your pc happen to hang on a reboot at the verifying dmi pool data?

i recently had that problem for over a week and never did actually figure out what the problem was, its been fixed but i never found out why or what happened.

what i was able to find out is that all my hard drives (4 at the time of the problem) had their mbr and partition tables vanish. i used spotmau to recover most data and fix them a couple of times but it kept happening.

even at one point with a new motherboard and new hard drive connected started a fresh install and everything went good till the final install reboot and had the same problem.

to solve the problem i had to connect an ide drive to my pc and i don't know why. at that point i was able to get windows disc management able to copy the info from the drives giving me problems to a freshly reformatted and repartitioned drive.

after coping the data and i reformed all the other drives that kept having problems and used windows disc management to mirror my drives so i hopefully would not have his problem again.

i've since taken the drives with problems reformatted and partitioned them and used them in other pc's as the os boot drive, before a reformat wouldn't fully work and allow windows to be installed on them but by repartitioning them and formatting them i could then use them to install the os on it for another pc.

but as mentioned i never did find out what caused it, i am suspicious it was the new motherboards software i installed. i installed gigabyte software and it wanted a reboot and that's when all my problems restarted.

i hope this helps some.