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how to restore my drive letter!
- Thread starter karnoobs
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What OS are you running? It's rare that the system WANTS to format, sure you can't just click out of there? If not can you access the drive through explorer (just hit your windows key+E) and copy the files somewhere safe? Otherwise, try power cycling the PC. If it really does want to format and there aren't any other choices, a power cycle should revert back to the old drive letter and you can start over. (A power cycle is holding in the power button on the PC till it shuts off, not good for the hard drive but better than losing data). Good luck!
-Chris
-Chris
- Thread starter
- #3
unfortunately...i used system restore and it made it worse, and this partition now is unformatted and unallocated...i didnt format it till now...am using windows XP. I tried the power cycle and it made no difference, plz i need ur help i will loose all the data i collected from 7 years! :'(..AND DONT TELL ME WHY DIDNT U HAVE A BACKUP!! :'(, Thank you for ur kind help...btw i cant access the partition even using partition magic...some ppl adviced me to use restore4all i dont know what to do
For your data you might try to use it in a usb case on a non xp computer and copy the data at least onto a cd. (Remove drive..find someone with a case..hook it up)
I am sure there are better ideas out there on how to find or restore the partition without wiping the drive, but there are a couple of programs which let you retrieve your data to a separate drive. Mostly they are DOS. YOu might try googling them. I used one when an early virus wiped out partitions, and it worked all right (first letter is replaced with ? and long names get cut off). Good luck.
I am sure there are better ideas out there on how to find or restore the partition without wiping the drive, but there are a couple of programs which let you retrieve your data to a separate drive. Mostly they are DOS. YOu might try googling them. I used one when an early virus wiped out partitions, and it worked all right (first letter is replaced with ? and long names get cut off). Good luck.
- Thread starter
- #6
i tried to copy that partition using LINUX but it says the partition is unformatted...i tried repair windows which entered me to DOS but it says there is a problem with the partition...also when i view the info of the partition it shows no file system and 100% free 0% USED ... and btw i this problem is on my laptop so i am not accessible to the hard disk...can any one help?
You can connect laptop hard drive to a desktop with special adapter (there are several kinds, not expensive, eg one I use is £5 here in UK) or by using a USB enclosure (a little more, but still not expensive). You can then run a data recovery app from the host operating system to try to recover from your drive. I think this is the only way you'll get your data back. As I said, think you'll need to buy data recovery app - there's a free one here:-
but I've not had much luck with it on ntfs filestore.
but I've not had much luck with it on ntfs filestore.
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