Tech Support Forum - View Single Post - [SOLVED] Yes, I have "lost" a hard drive or partition in my computer!

RDN · 05-15-2008, 11:27 AM

Hi eneles - Oh. I guess that's not the response I was hoping for.

Yes, it's an Acer. Here's the full story as much as I can remember:

I had a problem creating an image of my C: drive. I make these image backups regularly and decided to do another one a few days ago. I discovered that two of my "Acronis" bootable backup CDs would not boot. I have 4 copies, so decided to make another two. So I burned an ISO image of the Acronis s/w to a cheap "Princo" CD. This CD would not boot also. I repeated the process to another CD with the same result.

I then used a better quality CD and it booted OK. To make sure the CD was OK, I clicked on "Restore" and browsed to my Image backups directory. I then exited the program thinking I hadn't done anything to drive C:. BIG mistake!

Drive C: would not boot. I hunted around and found a CD I had called "Bart's PE" which had a few utilities on it. I booted it and used it to do a chkdsk of drive C:. Unfortunately, the drive C: that it found was my drive G:. (The drive letters in the environment of Bart's PE were clearly not the same that Windows finds.)

So this chkdsk was taking for ever to complete and I wanted to stop it. I couldn't find any way of stopping it so I pulled the USB connector from my PC. This is probably when the damage was done to drive G:

I then used another CD called "Ultimate Boot CD" to try to boot my C: drive. Eventually I succeeded by using one of the "Boot" utilities on the CD. After booting the C: drive all seemed OK until I noticed that drive G: on my USB drive was "missing".

After rebooting my PC several times using the "Ultimate Boot CD", I tried to boot it normally, and to my surprise the C: drive did - and has continued - to boot normally. I have no idea why the C: drive managed to "fix" itself.

So now I'm left with the missing G: drive.

In the first screen shot I posted of the TestDisk window, there were errors reported concerning incorrect number of heads/cylinder and sectors/track. Is there anything that can be done to fix these errors as a way of getting the disk recognised.

I know it's a "long shot", but I really don't want to lose about two months worth of photographs.

Also, if I do have to reformat, if I re-partition exactly the same way as before do you think there's a utility that may be able to find the original files on the drive?

05-15-2008, 11:27 AM	#6 (permalink)
RDN Registered User Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 11 OS: XP SP3	Re: Yes, I have "lost" a hard drive or partition in my computer! Hi eneles - Oh. I guess that's not the response I was hoping for. Yes, it's an Acer. Here's the full story as much as I can remember: I had a problem creating an image of my C: drive. I make these image backups regularly and decided to do another one a few days ago. I discovered that two of my "Acronis" bootable backup CDs would not boot. I have 4 copies, so decided to make another two. So I burned an ISO image of the Acronis s/w to a cheap "Princo" CD. This CD would not boot also. I repeated the process to another CD with the same result. I then used a better quality CD and it booted OK. To make sure the CD was OK, I clicked on "Restore" and browsed to my Image backups directory. I then exited the program thinking I hadn't done anything to drive C:. BIG mistake! Drive C: would not boot. I hunted around and found a CD I had called "Bart's PE" which had a few utilities on it. I booted it and used it to do a chkdsk of drive C:. Unfortunately, the drive C: that it found was my drive G:. (The drive letters in the environment of Bart's PE were clearly not the same that Windows finds.) So this chkdsk was taking for ever to complete and I wanted to stop it. I couldn't find any way of stopping it so I pulled the USB connector from my PC. This is probably when the damage was done to drive G: I then used another CD called "Ultimate Boot CD" to try to boot my C: drive. Eventually I succeeded by using one of the "Boot" utilities on the CD. After booting the C: drive all seemed OK until I noticed that drive G: on my USB drive was "missing". After rebooting my PC several times using the "Ultimate Boot CD", I tried to boot it normally, and to my surprise the C: drive did - and has continued - to boot normally. I have no idea why the C: drive managed to "fix" itself. So now I'm left with the missing G: drive. In the first screen shot I posted of the TestDisk window, there were errors reported concerning incorrect number of heads/cylinder and sectors/track. Is there anything that can be done to fix these errors as a way of getting the disk recognised. I know it's a "long shot", but I really don't want to lose about two months worth of photographs. Also, if I do have to reformat, if I re-partition exactly the same way as before do you think there's a utility that may be able to find the original files on the drive?