Windows 7 help, D drive gone?

[sparklesTHEpony]

I'm puzzled and Google can't help! Any IT wizards on here? Had to reinstall windows 7 on my laptop due to couldnt activate windows explorer over and over.

So now it's all back to normal and fresh.. However my 250GB Hardrive (D:/) has completely gone??? Won't show up on my computer and its not under disk management with an unassigned letter. It's just, gone?

How do I get it back lol

 

[iain187]

what happens if you do win+r -> type 'diskpart' -> type 'list disk'

just checking as you said laptop - you defo had 2 physical disks in it?

 

[DrR]

Yeah unusual for a laptop to have 2 hard drives, is your C drive now 250gb bigger than it was before?

 

[GiT]

Personally I would turn it off, disconnect and re-connect all the HDD and SSD cables and try again first. In this instance - remove drive and re-insert.

Screen dump us the disk management screen...

 

[SharkyUK]

As above... two physical drives or a single drive partitioned into 2 logical drives?

 

[sparklesTHEpony]

After list disk there's just "disk 0" 232GB status online.

yeah C drive is still the same 250GB defo had a C and D drive however D is just gone. If I try to assign a letter to "reserved space" (100mb) it won't let me assign the letter D so is that a clue that it's still here somewhere?

 

[sparklesTHEpony]

It's not a usb or external HDD its internal space btw well was

 

[Rob]

It's not a usb or external HDD its internal space btw well was

And you're 100% sure it wasn't one physical drive that was partitioned and is no longer?

 

[sparklesTHEpony]

Pretty sure but not 100. Never took any notice of it, i just know C drive sucked with storage and is always almost full and D was the one I used for storage. I may have to unplug it when I find it and hopefully the old "on&off" thing works

 

[GiT]

Screen dump disk management page...

Oh and if you've reset it., was it running any disk management software before?

 

[sparklesTHEpony]

 

[realnumber 1]

Tried scanning for new hardware in device manager?

 

[msremmert]

When you reinstalled Windows, did it give you a list of all available drives and partitions? If so did you remove/change anything?
Does the drive appear under your BIOS? You tried the above such as removing the physical drives?

Stupid question but what laptop have you actually got? We can at least look up the spec and see what's actually meant to be in there

 

[sn00p]

...Had to reinstall windows 7 on my laptop due to couldnt activate windows explorer over and over....

So now it's all back to normal and fresh..

So when you reinstalled windows, how exactly did you make it "normal and fresh". Sounds like you've done a complete reinstall of windows rather than an upgrade/repair and it's repartitioned the drive to me.....

I recommend crying in the corner of the room.

 

[Cookie]

So when you reinstalled windows, how exactly did you make it "normal and fresh". Sounds like you've done a complete reinstall of windows rather than an upgrade/repair and it's repartitioned the drive to me.....

I recommend crying in the corner of the room.

Agreed. Sounds like Windows has done as you asked (but weren't paying attention to)
Time to cry

 

[172_Tom]

Your laptop only has one physical disk in it.

Sounds like it was previously formatted with two partitions and during the re-install has just had one large partition created.

I always keep data on a separate partition to the OS - that way I can re-install the OS without losing the data on the other partition.

An external HDD or NAS is also a good idea for performing backups to.

 

[Addicted]

Yep, sadly you've fucked it.

As above, originally 2 partitions (3 or 4 with MBR etc), and sadly by not going to advanced settings while installing, it will have just formatted it into one partition.

 

[Darren S]

Definitely sounds like it's gone. Unless you've got one of the ultra-high end laptops with twin drives that cost a bloody fortune, I'd strongly believe that your data has gone.

What @iain187 suggested initially is perhaps the best solution. If diskpart doesn't 'see' the disk - you've pretty much had it. Disk Management only goes so far and can play funny buggers with drives.

 

[Addicted]

It could also be drivers, if you do genuinely have 2 drives, one maybe on another of the chipset controllers, that requires you to load the driver during install. But this sounds unlikely, as you said your C drive was tiny, and D was big, and now C is big.

 

[Ex-User (19928)]

lols.

Most likely it was a partition as everyone has said. Very few laptops have 2 physical storage drives. It's worth noting that the quick format done by Windows will not erase the physical data and depending how much you've used it since posting this, you could expect to retrieve some of your data by using a data recovery specialist.

 

[iain187]

Pretty sure but not 100. Never took any notice of it, i just know C drive sucked with storage and is always almost full and D was the one I used for storage. I may have to unplug it when I find it and hopefully the old "on&off" thing works

After list disk there's just "disk 0" 232GB status online.

yeah C drive is still the same 250GB defo had a C and D drive however D is just gone. If I try to assign a letter to "reserved space" (100mb) it won't let me assign the letter D so is that a clue that it's still here somewhere?

I think it's fair to say on the basis that your C drive never had any space and you disk is 232gb according to diskpart - it is likely you had a small partition for windows, a large partition for general data (and you will of had that system reserved partition but lets ignore that for now)

when you reinstalled windows you probably wiped C & D and created 1 big C which is why I imagine you will confirm C doesn't suck so much for storage anymore

But not because it doesn't have any of your files from D on either!

If you had any thing important you will need someone clued up to guide you through data recovery options - I have never done it before so wouldn't like to advise you.



It is unlikely but we haven't strictly rules out the very unusual possibility of a 2nd HDD being someone within your laptop that is just plain old fooked and your computer can't read from it anymore.... I wouldn't waste my time looking for it though!

 

[Ex-User (19928)]

lols.

Most likely it was a partition as everyone has said. Very few laptops have 2 physical storage drives. It's worth noting that the quick format done by Windows will not erase the physical data and depending how much you've used it since posting this, you could expect to retrieve some of your data by using a data recovery specialist.

I should just point out if you've read this- the more you use the disk, the less you'll recover.

 

[GiT]

Right... So whip out the drive and see if it's a 500GB unit or if there's 2 drives in it and one isn't being seen

 

[172_Tom]

Right... So whip out the drive and see if it's a 500GB unit or if there's 2 drives in it and one isn't being seen

If it was a 500GB drive then disk manager would show the remainder as unallocated space.

OP - try this, you might be able to recover some files with it:
http://pcinspector.de/FileRecovery/instructions.htm?po=2&language=1

 

[GiT]

If it was a 500GB drive then disk manager would show the remainder as unallocated space.

OP - try this, you might be able to recover some files with it:
http://pcinspector.de/FileRecovery/instructions.htm?po=2&language=1

Well I thought that but makes no sense if the D: was 250 odd before as Windows will need 40GB for the OP system, unless he's got his figures all wrong and we are chasing wild geese! lol

 

[Darren S]

@Jeff simply 's comment - the more you use it - the more you'll loose. Very true. There's a chance that some of the data is still there after a reformat or disk failure, but the more usage it has, the more likely that sectors of the disk are being written over and lost forever.

As others have said on here - it's worth investing in some form of separate storage device - and by that, not just a USB stick that you use occasionally. With a PC, I'm fortunate enough to have the space for three large SATA drives to sit in a RAID-5 configuration - allowing for one drive to suffer from total failure without having an immediate risk to my data. Couple that with the cheap online data storage services these days, and there's little reason not to have decent backup.

Small NAS boxes are forever coming down in price - as is the cost of the drives to go in them, all the while as their capacities increase. So long are you're not an obsessive hoarder of films in 4K quality - you should have enough space. Even my little trio of 2TB drives, gives me around 3.6TB storage capacity, after the file structure is applied. Plus, you'll be able to access the NAS box from any other network device - not just your laptop.

 

[Ex-User (19928)]

I think most people are happy to play luck of the draw with their data though. Even after total loss (including loss/stolen laptops) most people don't seem to realise it doesn't have to be like that.

I built a FreeNAS system this year. Before then I had zero backups. But I decided enough's enough and that there's no reason not to.

I imagine you can pay for a cloud backup solution for not much these days.

 

[SharkyUK]

^ I have to agree with the chaps above; there's no excuse for NOT backing up data these days (the important stuff at least). Storage has never been cheaper and the range of cloud services available has never been greater.

 

[iain187]

If your important stuff consists of word docs and spreadsheets and not too many pictures there isn't really an excuse not to use dropbox

 

[sn00p]

You also need to make sure that your backups are *recoverable*, you'd be amazed at how easy it is to fail at this. Last year had a drive fail on a machine at work, fine, I'll just restore from the time machine backup.....

Time machine had been quite happily backing up, every hour to a system restorable image. What time machine didn't say at any point was that one file inside a virtual machine (4GB) was already corrupted and when time machine couldn't back it up instead of failing with "big red flashing lights" it would instead say "backup successfully done".

Fortunately, I had a double backup, I had windows inside the virtual machine doing a windows backup, so although I wasn't able to do the simple restore of the mac from time machine, I was able to reinstall Mac OS and create a new virtual machine and restore from the backed up windows image.

 

[Darren S]

I think most people are happy to play luck of the draw with their data though. Even after total loss (including loss/stolen laptops) most people don't seem to realise it doesn't have to be like that.

That's the bit I don't really understand. I've got pictures dumped from various memory cards saved in multiple areas. Once fibre gets into our apartment block (next month if all goes well!) - I'll be uploading them to some cloud-storage, probably iCloud to keep things more straight-forward. I'm admin on the work's Dropbox corporate account, so I might 'acquire' a bit of space on there too.

But just this week, I had a bloke at work who's phone was knackered. It was swapped out - but ALL he was concerned about were the pictures of his kids being migrated across. The broken phone was the only place where these pictures were stored. If they are so vital to you (understandably) - why wouldn't you be asking how to back some of this stuff up? Far too many people have a blase approach to data these days - as if some magic button or service will instantly revert the effects of their phone being eaten, their laptop being stolen or PC bursting into flames.

Just crazy.

 

[Ex-User (19928)]

That's the bit I don't really understand. I've got pictures dumped from various memory cards saved in multiple areas. Once fibre gets into our apartment block (next month if all goes well!) - I'll be uploading them to some cloud-storage, probably iCloud to keep things more straight-forward. I'm admin on the work's Dropbox corporate account, so I might 'acquire' a bit of space on there too.

But just this week, I had a bloke at work who's phone was knackered. It was swapped out - but ALL he was concerned about were the pictures of his kids being migrated across. The broken phone was the only place where these pictures were stored. If they are so vital to you (understandably) - why wouldn't you be asking how to back some of this stuff up? Far too many people have a blase approach to data these days - as if some magic button or service will instantly revert the effects of their phone being eaten, their laptop being stolen or PC bursting into flames.

Just crazy.

Computers don't generally go wrong though, so people don't see it as a problem that'll happen to them. Completely understandable, I've gone years without any backups. I mainly built my NAS as a technical exercise, the majority of my stuff is music/films etc. I recently lost all my music collection, not sure how- it appears that I just didn't bother taking it off my Macbook before formatting it. Never to mind, gives me an excuse to rebuild it in FLAC.

Pictures/home videos are the killer though, but the market has answered with iCloud/Whatever Google's version is called.

 

[Amos91]

I think we knew the outcome of this thread as soon as he used a camera for a screenshot.

 

[Addicted]

So, have we confirmed OP is still looking for the D?

 

[Amos91]

So, have we confirmed OP is still looking for the D?

Don't worry I've found it. Screenshot of a screenshot and plenty of renowned red arrows should make is simple -

 

[SharkyUK]

Just out of interest OP... what happens if you assign a different drive letter for your CD-ROM drive...?

 

[Ex-User (19928)]

Just out of interest OP... what happens if you assign a different drive letter for your CD-ROM drive...?

Windows has always automatically reassigned optical drives when a new HDD is detected in my experience. Always used to piss the f**k out of me as a kid when my Dad would put an extra HDD (for someone he was helping out) in the computer and then when I'd try and load whatever game I was playing it would say "please insert CD and retry" etc.