D drive missing.

botheredbothered Manchester UK
edited April 2004 in Hardware
My PC started crashing, just freezing up for 20 seconds or untill resetting. I tried a system restore incase it was something that was installed recently. A box popped up that said 'changes to drive D cannot be reversed' I went ahead with the restore. I have reversed the restore as it didn't fix anything but when I look in windows explorer and click the D drive a box pops up saying drive D isn't formatted, would I like to format it now? No, I want it back. If I right click it > properties, it shows as an empty drive with 0 free space. I'm just going to see if it's in the bios.

Comments

  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited April 2004
    It's shown in bios correctly, it's in device manager like this. How can I get it back?
    PS, it's the quantum.
  • TBonZTBonZ Ottawa, ON Icrontian
    edited April 2004
    Is this a partitioned drive or is it a stand alone d: drive only?

    EDIT - From your jpeg, I guess it's a standalone unpartitioned drive.

    If you have a Win98 startup disk, also check fdisk and see what it has to say, assuming of course your using a FAT filesystem rather than NTFS.
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited April 2004
    It's a stand alone 30Gb drive, it was working perfectly before the restore.
    Would fdisk loose the data on the disk?
  • DexterDexter Vancouver, BC Canada
    edited April 2004
    START MENU -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management.

    See if the drive is active, formatted and has a partition.

    Dexter...
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited April 2004
    bothered wrote:
    It's a stand alone 30Gb drive, it was working perfectly before the restore.
    Would fdisk loose the data on the disk?

    Not if you ONLY use the option which lists partition info. DO NOT DELETE or use other options, but the Partition info can be looked at to see if it is there with no further data loss.

    Deleting or creating a partition WOULD lose data, though. THOSE two things, you want to avoid doing.

    What brand, before we go too far, is your external drive???? Knowing that and if you have WindowsUpdated between the time it last worked and now would be good things to know.

    Ther HAVE been some issues with externals and viruses, updates, and BIOS revs on boards. So, did drive appear and vanish at random before this, or did it just suddenly totally vanish once and not reappear???

    John D.
  • FormFactorFormFactor At the core of forgotten
    edited April 2004
    Yup disk managment should easily fix your problem.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited April 2004
    If you have Norton Utilities/System Works boot from the CD and run ndd.exe (Norton Disc Doctor - you might have to hunt around on the CD to find it).

    Point it at the goofed-out drive and tell it to look for partitions. With any luck it will find one and be able to put humpty back together again.
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited April 2004
    Thanks guys.
    ageek, it's an internal drive, sorry for the confusion. I looked in computer management and got this, I don't know why it says it's a primary partition, I'm sure it wasn't before. It all seems to be there except it shows as an empty drive and asks (in windows explorer) if I want to format the drive)
    I don't have anything from Norton. What can I do?
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited April 2004
    bothered wrote:
    ...What can I do?
    TestDisk might be worth a shot.
    TestDisk

    Description
    Tool to check and undelete partition
    Works with the following partitions:
    - FAT12 FAT16 FAT32
    - Linux EXT2/EXT3
    - Linux SWAP (version 1 and 2)
    - NTFS (Windows NT/W2K/XP)
    - BeFS (BeOS)
    - UFS (BSD)
    - Netware
    - ReiserFS

    TestDisk is under GNU Public License.
    It runs under

    DOS/Win9x
    Windows NT 4/2000/XP/2003
    Linux
    FreeBSD
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited April 2004
    Prof, I love you.
    Ran testdisc it did some tests, I didn't understand all the results but one said boot sector and some other bit didn't match so I went for the option to copy it back from a back up. IT WORKED! My D drive is fully functional again with all my family pics and music and games and apps and Prof did I say I love you?
    How you guys know this sort of stuff always impresses me. Excellent, send me your address prof and I'll send you a box of proper Tea bags.
    Many thanks.
    :respect::clap: :usflag: :respect:
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited April 2004
    Yippee! :clap:

    Glad it worked. With Microsoft's propensity for co-opting other programs into Windows I'm surprised they haven't put a little more oomph into file and disc recovery. Probably only a matter of time... :vimp:

    Fire up that burner - you don't want to lose the family pictures!
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited April 2004
    I have about 800 on disks already and about 400 more in my D drive. Time to get burning.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited April 2004
    Bothered: Great that that worked!

    Prof: Excellent archive link, grabbed the whole set. Thanks from another tech who is a util packrat. Now you know why I have 80+ GB on HDs just for archives... :D
  • DexterDexter Vancouver, BC Canada
    edited April 2004
    bothered wrote:
    I don't know why it says it's a primary partition, I'm sure it wasn't before.


    That's normal, by the way.

    Dexter...
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited April 2004
    It wouldn't hurt to do a thorough virus scan and chkdsk. It might just be a data bobble, but a disc developing physical problems or a boot sector virus could also be the culprit.

    I know a lot of the recent stinkers mutate frequently. Norton has been updating their virus def's on an almost daily basis lately.
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited April 2004
    Yes, I understand, but why are my C and D drives shown as primary partitions but my E drive is shown as a logical drive? I thought I remembered D being a logical drive as well? C has the os on it, the others have everything else.
  • DexterDexter Vancouver, BC Canada
    edited April 2004
    http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/L/logical_drive.html

    Was that drive not formatted to it's full capacity?

    Also, did the D drive ever have an OS on it? It may have a boot sector left over.

    Dexter...
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited April 2004
    As in the top picture, Drive C is 15Gb, D is 30Gb and E is 40Gb.C and D are on IDE1 and E is on IDE2 with a CD writer. Only C has ever had an os. I can't remember how they were set up originally but through a couple of motherboard (and everything else) changes only C has been formatted.
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited April 2004
    profdlp wrote:
    I know a lot of the recent stinkers mutate frequently. Norton has been updating their virus def's on an almost daily basis lately.

    So has Pc-cillin. I ran a full virus check and it found nothing. I think something just got corrupted.
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