I'm having a lil' problem since I've installed W7 for the 2nd time: My 2nd hard drive ain't in windows anymore. Some partition programs still show it, and all the data that's on it, but I can't access it. And I can't use that partition programs that start to reassign the letter to the drive.
Any possible solutions? I've got 500GB of Data on there, and I really don't wanna loose it, so I'd be very happay if you'd help me. Thanks in advance.

This happened to me once.

All i did was disconnected the 2nd drive manually via opening the pc up and unplugging it.

Booted up the PC as usual and deleted any refrences to that drive in device manager, then shut it down, reconnected it again and re-booted.

Bang, windows booted again, found new device..etc... assigned it a drive letter and all my data was there.

Job done.

The problem is now, that somehow out of the blue (I din't try unplugging yet) the partition of my other hard drive also dissappeared. Any reason why my PC acts so weird?

Try to access it via a Linux LiveCD, and if the partition doesn't appear, use the program "testdisk" /there are guides in internet about it/ to recover your partition.

Quote from Ivo Georgiev :

Try to access it via a Linux LiveCD, and if the partition doesn't appear, use the program "testdisk" /there are guides in internet about it/ to recover your partition.

It even shows in Testdisk, and it shows no problems there (also all the files that were on it), I tried giving it a different filesystem, some other things, and the 1tb HDD is still not shown in Windows (Luckily, the partitions is there again, maybe due to testdisk, maybe due to a reboot.)

Quote from Stefani24 :

I'm having a lil' problem since I've installed W7 for the 2nd time: My 2nd hard drive ain't in windows anymore. Some partition programs still show it, and all the data that's on it, but I can't access it. And I can't use that partition programs that start to reassign the letter to the drive.
Any possible solutions? I've got 500GB of Data on there, and I really don't wanna loose it, so I'd be very happay if you'd help me. Thanks in advance.

Have you tried, Find & Mount?

http://findandmount.com/

Unless the file system is corrupt it should find all the data, and it's free. Just make sure you do the thorogh scan and wait for it to complete. It will take a few hours with a 500Gb drive though.

If that doesn't work, give EASEUS Data recovery wizard a try. Use the demo first to see if it will find the data you want, then if it does you'll need to buy it to actually recover the data, it's not as expensive as others though.

http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/

Quote from gezmoor :

Have you tried, Find & Mount?

http://findandmount.com/

Unless the file system is corrupt it should find all the data, and it's free. Just make sure you do the thorogh scan and wait for it to complete. It will take a few hours with a 500Gb drive though.

If that doesn't work, give EASEUS Data recovery wizard a try. Use the demo first to see if it will find the data you want, then if it does you'll need to buy it to actually recover the data, it's not as expensive as others though.

http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/

I tried to use the EASEUS partition manager to recover that, but it didn't let me reassign the letter. (It doesn't seem to be damaged, and showed all the data)
I'll let find and mount run through to see what it can do.

EDIT: A'ight, I let it run throught, but it doesn't show me any partitions. (Maybe because I didn't partition that drive.) Any other suggestions?

Quote from Stefani24 :

I tried to use the EASEUS partition manager to recover that, but it didn't let me reassign the letter. (It doesn't seem to be damaged, and showed all the data)
I'll let find and mount run through to see what it can do.

EDIT: A'ight, I let it run throught, but it doesn't show me any partitions. (Maybe because I didn't partition that drive.) Any other suggestions?

There will still be a partition on the drive, it will just be a single partition covering the entire drive. If find and mount doesn't even find a partition structure then the file system must be completely messed up.

The closest I've seen to this myself is for a customer where F&M saw the partition but couldn't read any of the data inside. I ended up using "Data recovery wizard" from EASEUS.

http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/

You can "trial" it first to see if it will recover anything useful, in demo mode it will allow you to "preview" whatever files etc it can recover but won't let you recover them. You'll have to pay for it to actually recover the data. Of course not everything will be recoverable if the file structure is bad enough for F&M not to work.

As far as I'm aware there are no free programs that will recover data, when things get that bad. I've looked and was unable to find any so I ended up paying for some. Data recovery is far to large a commercial market for software companies to give the software away free.

Quote from Stefani24 :

I'm having a lil' problem since I've installed W7 for the 2nd time: My 2nd hard drive ain't in windows anymore. Some partition programs still show it, and all the data that's on it, but I can't access it. And I can't use that partition programs that start to reassign the letter to the drive.
Any possible solutions? I've got 500GB of Data on there, and I really don't wanna loose it, so I'd be very happay if you'd help me. Thanks in advance.

I don't suppose you remember enabling Bitlocker drive encryption under W7 do you?

Quote from CSU1 :

I don't suppose you remember enabling Bitlocker drive encryption under W7 do you?

What do you mean?

@gezmoor: Ill see what it shows, but their partition manager showed all the files, also did testdisk. I just can't access them somehow. It also shows the name of the partition everywhere (Daten 2); It's just not assigned to a letter it seems

Quote from Stefani24 :

What do you mean?

@gezmoor: Ill see what it shows, but their partition manager showed all the files, also did testdisk. I just can't access them somehow. It also shows the name of the partition everywhere (Daten 2); It's just not assigned to a letter it seems

That's because (any) partition manager isn't designed to extract individual files, only work with partitions as a whole. So it can copy entire partitions but not individualy recover data from within a partition.

Such software may well show the structure and files within the partition but this is solely to lend confidence to the user that the software is really working and also to ensure you choose the correct partition to work with.

Same for Disc Imaging software, which is designed to back up whole discs or partitions but not individual files, (that's what "back up" software is for), which often allows you to see the contents of a partition or disc.


Edited to add - CSU is refering to the disc encryption functionality that is built in to Windows 7 Ultimate edition. If you encrypt a disc, recovery software will be unable to recover the data as it will not know the method of encryption of the data.

Quote from Stefani24 :

...Any reason why my PC acts so weird?

Nasty virus ?

Quote from Ripley :

Nasty virus ?

Spybot did it's thing and didn't really find anything. (Apart from the usual).
The EASEUS data recovery showed most of my files. I've "bought" it now, and let it run through again, and then I'll see if it can recover those files.

EDIT: A'ight, the program shows all my files, but doesn't EXACTLY do what I want. I meant to have this partition back as it was, and not save the files that are on it, on another partition, (I wouldn't have enough free space for that anyway).
So is there anything other I could do? (Preferrably without unplugging my hd and plugging it in again)

Sorry if it's to early, but I really want my 1TB space again, anyone know anything?

From what you're saying I don't think you're going to recover the partition as it was. You're only option to get the data is to use the data recovery software and copy it on to another partition/disc.

If the EASEUS software isn't seeing the data in its normal directory structure it's because the file system is corrupted. If the file system is ok it will show all the directory structure and files in their normal places. Either way copying it to another partition is going to be your only option as far as I can see.

You're dealing with a messed up disc, you just have to accept that you're not going to be able to recover a perfect "copy" of the data as it was on the disc before it got messed up.

Quote from gezmoor :

From what you're saying I don't think you're going to recover the partition as it was. You're only option to get the data is to use the data recovery software and copy it on to another partition/disc.

If the EASEUS software isn't seeing the data in its normal directory structure it's because the file system is corrupted. If the file system is ok it will show all the directory structure and files in their normal places. Either way copying it to another partition is going to be your only option as far as I can see.

You're dealing with a messed up disc, you just have to accept that you're not going to be able to recover a perfect "copy" of the data as it was on the disc before it got messed up.

The EASEUS manager shows everything how it's supposed to be, I don't see why the hard drive would be corrupted; I didn't really do anything and suddenly windows doesn't show it anymore. However, the files that are left aren't really important, it's just important for me to give this drive its letter back. Is there any way to find out that the drive is hardware-wise corrupted?

If EASEUS can see the files then the drive should be fine hardware wise.

If all you want to do is get the disc back and not recover any data from it, lets start from scratch.

!! WARNING FOLLOWING THE STEPS BELOW WILL LOOSE ALL THE DATA ON THE DISC !!

I have some questions:

a) If you "right click" on you "my computer" icon on the desktop and select "manage" then select "disk management" can you see the disk in question?

If yes, then simply right click it and "delete volume", then when it shows as "unallocated", right click it select "new simple volume" and follow the steps in the wizard. . Reboot the computer and windows should automatically recognise the drive.

If the answer to a) is no, then you have two options.

1. Use the EASEUS partition master software you have and select and delete the volume on the drive.

If you can't see the drive using the EASEUS software then

2. Download and burn GParted on to a CD, reboot the machine and run it as a boot disc. Select the drive in question and delete any volumes/partitions on it. Reboot the machine and see if you see in step a) above under "disk manager" under windows.

Quote from gezmoor :

If EASEUS can see the files then the drive should be fine hardware wise.

If all you want to do is get the disc back and not recover any data from it, lets start from scratch.

!! WARNING FOLLOWING THE STEPS BELOW WILL LOOSE ALL THE DATA ON THE DISC !!

I have some questions:

a) If you "right click" on you "my computer" icon on the desktop and select "manage" then select "disk management" can you see the disk in question?

If yes, then simply right click it and "delete volume", then when it shows as "unallocated", right click it select "new simple volume" and follow the steps in the wizard. . Reboot the computer and windows should automatically recognise the drive.

If the answer to a) is no, then you have two options.

1. Use the EASEUS partition master software you have and select and delete the volume on the drive.

If you can't see the drive using the EASEUS software then

2. Download and burn GParted on to a CD, reboot the machine and run it as a boot disc. Select the drive in question and delete any volumes/partitions on it. Reboot the machine and see if you see in step a) above under "disk manager" under windows.

OMAIGAWD.
I went to manage, and it was there showing healthy and all....and I could assign it to a new letter...Imma use B!!!
Thanks so much for pointing that out!

Quote from Stefani24 :

OMAIGAWD.
I went to manage, and it was there showing healthy and all....and I could assign it to a new letter...Imma use B!!!
Thanks so much for pointing that out!

You're welcome.

Sorry I got sidetracked but I thought you were looking to recover data from a "faulty" hard drive. Just goes to show you should always check the obvious first.

Quote from gezmoor :

You're welcome.

Sorry I got sidetracked but I thought you were looking to recover data from a "faulty" hard drive. Just goes to show you should always check the obvious first.

It's okay, it's not like I spent money or anything.
It's just that I didn't know that there was even a drive Manager in W7.