I have a 500 GB Seagate disk in an external enclosure connected by USB cable to a USB 2.0 port on my Acer lap top PC. The disk is partitioned into 3 drives. They are labelled F:, G: and H:, but in "My Computer", I can see only F: and H:.
Below is a picture of the Disk Management window.
The first partition of USB disk 'Disk 1' should be "Multimedia, Downloads (G: )", but now it has no drive letter displayed. When I right click on that partition, Disk Management displays merely "Help", there are no other options like "Change Drive Letter and Paths" or "Properties".
I have an identical drive which I use as a backup of the first one and is not normally connected to the system. When I connect it and power it up, the Disk Management window is as shown below.
It looks like the drive that should be drive J: (the first partition of USB disk 'Disk 2'), is given the drive letter "G:". Normally, this partition on 'Disk 2' is labelled "Copy of G: (J: )".
I note that the drive missing from "My Computer" (the drive labelled "Multimedia, Downloads") is indicated as "EISA Configuration". I don't know what this means, but I don't think it should be there.
I have read the thread 'Have you "lost" a hard drive, partition or files in your computer?' and have downloaded "TestDisk". It is running now. It is about 20% done after 3 1/4 hours.
What TestDisk displayed was slightly different from the pictures shown in the "stickied" thread and I would like to ask about it. But as TestDisk will probably not finish for another 15 hours or so, I would like to know if it is safe to stop it.
In the window that is running now, there is the word "STOP" at the bottom:
Do I just press "Enter" to make it stop and is it safe to stop it?
Once I can re-run TestDisk I'll post pictures of the windows that I see. My apologies for not taking accurate notes of what I saw when I ran it.
Thanks in advance for any help you can give.