Hard Drive Partition Wiped Out Somehow...

[eli3k]

I have one hard drive on the primary channel; this one works. The second hard drive, a Maxtor, is connected on the secondary channel; this one has problems. They're both on the same IDE channel, too.

The second hard drive is split into several partitions. One day I was running a game and then there was an error - writing to the hard drive was delayed and data might be lost - I forgot to write it down. Then the hard drive disappeared off the screen in Windows Explorer, although it was still present in Device Manager.

The disappearing happened a couple of times already, and the hard drive reappears if I reboot. Okay then I found out today that there is nothing on the first partition of the hard drive. WinXP says it is unformatted, too.

What happened, and can I get the data back? I was reading a similar topic somewhere in here and I'm running a recovery software called GetDataBack, which the topic recommended, to see what will happen.

Thank you,
- Eli

 

[jlockley]

1) possibly a virus. By now you know this.
2) there are several recovery programs which will save your data. They are a pain, but may be worth it.

 

[bcastner]

You might give this freeware tool a shot. It tries only to repair the partition table:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/

You want "Test Disk"

 

[eli3k]

I'm sure it's not a virus. I ran the partition through GetDataBack - works perfectly, Although it does recover a bunch of other files - so now I don't know if any files were actually lost. If I try and repair the partition table, would it affect the rest of the partitions? Would it also affect the data somehow?

 

[ProphetZarquon]

I have also lost a partition. Mine appears as unformatted space, so PM8 and windows tools only offer to format it.

I don't have enough space anywhere else to use a tool that clones the lost partition to another disk. I need to restore it to it's original space.

I'm also wondering if a repair of the partition table will restore my lost partition. I don't even know that the partition table will appear damaged, since the other partitions on the drive still work.

My post:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=909629

 

[ProphetZarquon]

No tips on recovering data from a knocked out partition?

It reads as RAW (No file tables).