Hard drive gone after using Partition Magic!! please hrelp.

This morning i wanted to redo my computer so it had a 220GB primary partition (Windows) and a 10GB Logical recovery partition which i would later use for norton ghost, So i used the windows 7 CD to delete and create a primary partition and installed windows 7, when windows started up, i installed Partition Magic to create a logical partition on the unallocated 10GB... but it didn't show the unallocated 10GB of space... it only showed 230GB primary partition..

So i went in to windows 7 device manager -> disk manager and it showed the 10GB free space which i want to turn in to the recovery partition... i right clicked and selected format, clicked next.. etc like you do and when i clicked finished, my PC abruptly restarted and wouldnt get past the windows loading screen and then restart again.... (insert swear word here).... so i stuck my winblows CD back in and got back to the installation screen where it lets you delete/create/format partitions....

It shows my external 1TB backup drive which hasn't been effected and it also shows my 230GB main hard drive inside the PC as 100.0MB !! what the hell it doesn't give me the option to delete it or format it... i'm kinda lost where to go from here, any help would be hugely apprectaed

Here is a photo i took of my smonitor so you can see what i mean
i365.photobucket.com...

Many Thanks

Sounds like you lost it


You can try to take it to a hardware restore person at some computer shops have equipment that they can search through like the police can. Then take the info put it on another drive then re-format your original than transfer it back


now you know why it says not to turn off the computer or game system while its saving.

Sorry about all your troubles

Also, all your info will be able to be seen by whoever fixes it

reply to post by Itop1


Hrmm.. that 100mb partition would be the 100mb Windows creates for system files..

Not sure why you cannot see unpartitioned space - but this comes to the question?

Why do you use Partition Magic to make the 10gb ghost partition? Surely drive management is a better option?

Are you installing windows to the entire 220gb and then using partition magic to resize your entire drive to create the 10gb partition? Yikes!

It appears partition magic bloopered and corrupted the entire partition, but I still don't know why you cannot see the unpartitioned space.

I'd get some bootable partition software and boot to that and entirely wipe the drive.

See if windows detects it then, and if it does, create the 210gb partition leaving 10gb unpartitioned. Install windows to the 210gb partition. Allocate the 10gb ghost partition inside windows using drive management.

Hope some of that rambling thought process above helps..

I don't know if this will help you, but it's worth a shot...

Link to : How to Recover Re-partitioned Hard Drives

Link to: Windows 7 Forums

Originally posted by badw0lf
reply to post by Itop1

 

Hrmm.. that 100mb partition would be the 100mb Windows creates for system files..

Not sure why you cannot see unpartitioned space - but this comes to the question?

Why do you use Partition Magic to make the 10gb ghost partition? Surely drive management is a better option?

Are you installing windows to the entire 220gb and then using partition magic to resize your entire drive to create the 10gb partition? Yikes!

It appears partition magic bloopered and corrupted the entire partition, but I still don't know why you cannot see the unpartitioned space.

I'd get some bootable partition software and boot to that and entirely wipe the drive.

See if windows detects it then, and if it does, create the 210gb partition leaving 10gb unpartitioned. Install windows to the 210gb partition. Allocate the 10gb ghost partition inside windows using drive management.

Hope some of that rambling thought process above helps..

I didn't use partition magic, i only opened it, i used windows to create the partition, and using the "Add Drivers" option under the System Receovery option i can see my drives... but its the only place i can though....
and i didn't restart th system, the pc restarted itself after i clicked finish on creating the partition in windows using the windows disk management tool.

i365.photobucket.com...

have you checked the drive setting in the bios?
the disk software may have changed them before it rebooted?

Originally posted by Itop1

I didn't use partition magic, i only opened it, i used windows to create the partition, and using the "Add Drivers" option under the System Receovery option i can see my drives...

But here you say "i installed Partition Magic to create a logical partition on the unallocated 10GB... but it didn't show the unallocated 10GB of space... it only showed 230GB primary partition.. "

So which is it, did you allocate the 10gb before installing windows using the Windows Setup or did you do it After you installed windows? Why was partition magic at all? I can't work out what steps you took.

but its the only place i can though....

and i didn't restart th system, the pc restarted itself after i clicked finish on creating the partition in windows using the windows disk management tool.

i365.photobucket.com...

Restarting the system like that can cause data loss, instability etc, but your system rebooted itself meaning to me that some software was in the process of doing something windows did not expect, and a system fault resulted in the reboot.

Given that as soon as this happened, you cannot access your System drive anymore, I get the impression that whatever the software was, it was dealing with the hard drives.

Therefore, partition magic was working on the partition that has disappeared.

Same end resulting actions, re-partition the entire hard drive to be completely empty, create your partitions before installing anything, format the system partition and install windows, then in windows format the ghost partition to whatever format ghost recognises.

Originally posted by badw0lf

Originally posted by Itop1

I didn't use partition magic, i only opened it, i used windows to create the partition, and using the "Add Drivers" option under the System Receovery option i can see my drives...

But here you say "i installed Partition Magic to create a logical partition on the unallocated 10GB... but it didn't show the unallocated 10GB of space... it only showed 230GB primary partition.. "

So which is it, did you allocate the 10gb before installing windows using the Windows Setup or did you do it After you installed windows? Why was partition magic at all? I can't work out what steps you took.

but its the only place i can though....

and i didn't restart th system, the pc restarted itself after i clicked finish on creating the partition in windows using the windows disk management tool.

i365.photobucket.com...

Restarting the system like that can cause data loss, instability etc, but your system rebooted itself meaning to me that some software was in the process of doing something windows did not expect, and a system fault resulted in the reboot.

Given that as soon as this happened, you cannot access your System drive anymore, I get the impression that whatever the software was, it was dealing with the hard drives.

Therefore, partition magic was working on the partition that has disappeared.

Same end resulting actions, re-partition the entire hard drive to be completely empty, create your partitions before installing anything, format the system partition and install windows, then in windows format the ghost partition to whatever format ghost recognises.

if you keep reading you will see...

So i went in to windows 7 device manager -> disk manager and it showed the 10GB free space which i want to turn in to the recovery partition... i right clicked and selected format, clicked next.. etc like you do and when i clicked finished, my PC abruptly restarted

it says i used windows... partition magic didnt see the space, which i also said, no third party software was used to create partition, only windows

Your 230 GB hard drive is still there and can be seen (Drive 0). So that hard drive itself is still good. What happened is your MBR (Master Boot Record) got corrupted (amongst other things).

You can use "Partition Table Doctor" to repair your partitions, but it will need to be done from DOS. You can get PTD from here:

www.ptdd.com...

You should never run "Partition Magic" from within Windows. You have to do it from DOS for it to work correctly. And you should never use the overlay feature of Partition Magic. It makes a mess of things.

Thanks all, i managed to get it fixed... i gave you all stars for the help.

Many thanks

I don't know the rules for posting this, but I make no money from it:

Spinrite

LOTS of info and demo on the site, definitely worth a look.

google Win7RescuePE_LiveCD_English.iso

and download, burn to a disk and boot up your system

use Partition Find and Mount to recover any data you may have lost [must be copied to another drive]

or use any of the other partitioning tools to repartition your drive the 100mb System_Sav partition isn't absolutely necessary.

reply to post by Itop1


Partition Magic does not work on Windows Vista or 7.

For my partition problems I use TestDisk.

this one works on Windows 7

www.partitionwizard.com...

reply to post by Itop1


hey thanks for posting your problem, i am glad that u got a solution since i have exactly the same problem (but different size 320GB).
So please share how you fixed it, as soon as possible
thank you.