I have the strangest problem of all

[dehzad]

I think I have the strangest problem of all. I bought a 200gb Western digital hard drive about 4 months ago and partitioned it in to three NTFS drives and I have been using it as a slave drive. It has been working fine up until couple of days ago that all of a sudden two of the partitions disappeared. The third partitions are ok. I used the WD disk diagnostics program and it says the drive is fine. I run Norton antivirus and no viruses found. I replaced the ribbon cable which didn’t help. One thing I have noticed is the hard drive gets very hot. I returned the first one that I bought for that reason but the second one also got hot so I put a cooling fun on it to keep it cool and when I opened the case yesterday the fan wasn’t working and the hard dive was hot I don’t know if they are suppose to get hot or what. I have a lot of data in these two partitions which I need to recover. Please help somebody.

 

[wolluf]

Assuming you're using 2k or XP. what does Disk Management see for this disk? Which partitions have disappeared (1&2, 2&3, 1&3)? Were they all primary partitions or one primary, one extended with 2 drives or 1 extended with 3 drives?

You may need a data recovery app. If the drive is ok, the data will be there.

Have you changed anything - particularly partitionwise on the master drive?. any other problems on the machine?

(Have you another machine you can slave the drive to - to see if partitions visible there)

 

[dehzad]

I am useing windows 2K and this is a slave drive. my operating system is on another hard drive. Disk Management sees one of the partitions(48gb)that is working but the other two partitions show up as one free space(135GB). I haven't changed anything at all the only thing I saw was I got a message a week ago that one the partitions that has disapearesd isgetting full. I have connected it to another W2K machine and I get the same result. The other thing I forgot to mention is the drive was getting hot so I installed a drive fan and when I opened the case I found out the fan has stoped working. I don't know what the numbers are that you asked for (18.2,28.3,18.3) please explain it to me. Thanks you very much for helping me with this problem. can you give me sugestions on wich recovery programs I should use. thanks again.

 

[wolluf]

I was asking about what sort of partitions (primary or extended or a mix) you had set up, and which had disappeared - or better, which is still visable (first, second or third?)

If the diagnostics say disk is ok, and one partition still visible, then probably data recovery best bet.

Free one:

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

(though I suspect it won't be much use)

Couple of commercial ones:-

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

http://www.webattack.com/get/filescavenger.html

If you manage to retrieve your files, I'd run diagnostic again & buy a new fan (though I'm not sure I'd trust it again with data). Also - a backup strategy is a good idea - DVD writers are very reasonable - and although hard drives are very large now, the actual data you need to backup is usually a small percentage of the total drive.

I would also use primary partitions (if you have been using extended) - as I've previously had issues 'losing' extended partitions. Never found a good reason why - but it definitely happens! Primaries I've always found good while the drive is ok.

 

[TekTippy4U]

wolluf;
just because I've seen this related to character codings and language settings - wolluf, I think the ambersands you typed - when pertaining to the partition stuff in your first post - got interpreted as the numeral eight (8)

dehzad;
interpreted - this "Which partitions have disappeared (1&2, 2&3, 1&3)?' would look like this -->
1 and 2 , 2 and 3, 1 and 3
hth

could try viewing with the DISKPART utility from Recovery Console


TT4U

Notification:
These are just my thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions.
Backup All Important Data/Docs

 

[dehzad]

Hi everyone

thanks for all your help and sory for mistaking & for number 8
it is the number 2 and 3 partitions that have disapeared. I just got my replacement hard drive and will try to recover the data tonight. I will let you know how it went. thanks again for your help.
dehzad