Half my hard drive is missing!

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suzannetf · #1 Post by **suzannetf** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 12:43 am

I bought my T42 through my school, and it has an 80 GB hard drive that is partitioned into a C: and D: drive. The D: drive is the smallest and is where I store all my personal files. To login, I use Novell and have a personal login and password. This past week, the time for my computer to start up has become very slow. Today, I was using my laptop on battery power and it shut off when I forgot to plug it in. Of course I found my cord and plugged it in to turn it back on... and it took a long time to start up as usual. However, after I logged in it told me that "Windows cannot load the user's profile..." and was logging me in on a default one. But it never came up (just black screen). So, I finally logged on as Administrator and got into Windows so I could research what was wrong. Some of my earlier internet searches told me that I had a corrupt user profile and would have to create a new one. But that's not it at all! My entire D: partition (where my profile is located) is missing! On System Restore it says D: is offline... when I try to access it from my computer it says it needs to be reformatted! D: doesn't even show up on the defragmenting tool anymore. What on earth could have happened to it? I would really love to get it back. I have a few files and class notes from the last few days that aren't backed up yet! :-O

The only other symptom my computer has had the last week beyond slowness is that the wireless radio doesn't seem to be working correctly as I'm not picking up any of the wi-fi at my school.

Everything in the D: drive was working fine tonight up until my computer shut down from low battery.

Also, in the My Computer --> Manage --> Disk Management, D: shows up as "Healthy."

#2 Post by **GomJabbar** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 5:19 am

I don't know too much about it, but I believe Spinrite might be able to recover your drive. I have heard the name mentioned a few times on these forums.

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

rbena · #3 Post by **rbena** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 3:08 pm

suzannetf wrote:Some of my earlier internet searches told me that I had a corrupt user profile and would have to create
a new one. But that's not it at all! My entire D: partition (where my profile is located) is missing!

A corrupt user profile is possible, or a corrupt MBR could also explain D-partition not being accessible.

For recovering data, I've had good success with PC Inspector File Recovery, (free download) at

http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/PC_Ins ... ector.html

Do you have an image of your C-partition? If not, you may want to create one, along with a backup of your D-partition. Can then be up and running in 5-10 minutes to quickly resolve most config faults / file corruption.

andyP · #4 Post by **andyP** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 3:25 pm

GomJabbar wrote:I don't know too much about it, but I believe Spinrite might be able to recover your drive. I have heard the name mentioned a few times on these forums.

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

I've been using SpinRite since 2004 for drive maintainance and file recovery, I can recommend it.
I once had a hdd that had to be formatted according to W2K, after running SpinRite I was able to image the hdd to a new one and trash the old one.

rbena · #5 Post by **rbena** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 3:37 pm

Just to add, you may want to run Drive Fitness Test or similar disk utility to check your hard drive integrity. A failing hard drive may also cause the progression of faults you are experiencing.

Spinrite as has been mentioned, is a good utility to recover your data, for saving to external media and then restoring to hard disk.

al7kz · #6 Post by **al7kz** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 4:11 pm

Hi suzannetf,

Just out of curiosity, how large are the C & D partitions?

What operating system are you using?

Did the school repartition the T42 and install the operating system?

My T42 shipped from Lenovo with one large partition (C) for the OS and user files, and a small hidden 5GB partition containing the predesktop restore files.

If you are using XP go to Disk Management to get the status of the disk partitions. It will show all partitions on drive, hidden or not, I believe. I don't have my T42 with me, or I could check that.

ciao

suzannetf · #7 Post by **suzannetf** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 4:31 pm

Disk management shows IBM_PRELOAD (C: ) as 46.07... which is correct. It says the file system is NTFS. (D: ) is also there, and it is 28.46 (which is what it was before). However, it doesn't show a file system (I think it was FAT32 or something like that). I don't know anything about File Systems or the differences, though. I just remember that they were different kinds. D: still shows up in My Computer... but according to the pie chart has 0 space to store on and is empty. When I try to explore it Windows wants to format it.

My operating system is Windows XP. My previous hard drive died (C: partition that time) and the school gave me a new one with the image I have now. I didn't like the way the partition was set up (I like the D: one bigger) but they said it couldn't be changed.

suzannetf · #8 Post by **suzannetf** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 4:44 pm

So, I was using "Recover My Files" and found a lot of stuff and was going to buy it... but the Free PC Inspector has found everything too and they're still in their original folders and everything (not weird numbers) so I'm definitely about to run out and buy that external hard drive I've been meaning to buy and save everything off.

The laptop repair guys are probably just going to wipe this drive or give me a new one anyway. They never seem all that interested in data recovery.

rbena · #9 Post by **rbena** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 5:00 pm

I am wondering with the slower boot-ups you've experienced, if there all also issues on your C-partition. You may want to first do a restore to the last known good configuration (pressing F11 on bootup and doing the restore), and then work on your D-partition.

If your D-partition has not been resolved, two options would be:

- try to recover your recent files on D-partition (that you hadn't backed up) by using one of the file recovery programs mentioned previously.

- or you could simply reformat D-partition to FAT32, and copy the data you've backed up, onto D-partition, minus the recent files you hadn't backed up.

rbena · #10 Post by **rbena** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 5:07 pm

Good to hear you can at least see your data files on D-partition.

Would be worthwhile tof first copy them onto an external Hdd.

Keep us updated.

suzannetf · #11 Post by **suzannetf** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 5:26 pm

I did try a system restore to about a week ago already. For some reason, in the window for system restore (on/off) it's turned on... but D: has been put offline and there is no way to change it. Even when I do system restore D: is unaffected (not brought back to normal). Of course it was working a week ago (it was on two days ago) but I don't know what the deal is.

Of course I'm concerned that the whole hard drive is about to go so I'm going to get C: off as quickly as possible too. (I mean, it's all one big hard drive, how is just one piece affected?)

rbena · #12 Post by **rbena** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 5:43 pm

In the very least, you need to recover your data off D-partition, and also any personal data and music files off of C-partition.

If your system still does not perform well, ideally is best to do a full recovery and restore of your C-partition.

Then set up your programs and create an 'image' of your C-partition. You'll then be able to make a quick recovery next time.

suzannetf · #13 Post by **suzannetf** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 6:03 pm

Yeah... I'm just going to get everything off that I want and let the laptop support people here do their worst. They'll probably just reformat it and put it back the way it was when I first got it preloaded with everything. Or just get me a new one. :-\

sktn77a · #14 Post by **sktn77a** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 2:15 pm

I have a similar problem with daughter #2's T41; the original 4Gb HDD suddenly just stopped working - gave "Disk Error" on boot up. I just put in a new drive and used the recovery CDs so she's up and running but all of her data/music/pictures are on the old drive. Haven't been able to access files when I put it in a USB enclosure or Ultrabay slim HDD adapter. Will PC inspector help here? I won't get the drive back home for several weeks but I'm trying to prepare so that I can get her files transferred back on to her computer when she comes home for a long weekend.

rbena · #15 Post by **rbena** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 5:40 pm

sktn77a wrote:Haven't been able to access files when I put it in a USB enclosure or Ultrabay slim HDD adapter. Will PC inspector help here?

There is the possibility if you install and run run PC Inspector on your new drive, and put the old drive in the Ultrabay slim adapter, you may be able to access files from the old drive.

Otherwise you'll need to try a disk recovery application, eg Spinrite.
Can be hit or miss depending on whether the files are accessible, and also if they are not corrupted. Good luck.

Half my hard drive is missing!

Half my hard drive is missing!

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