Lost hard drive after Vista install

Solnyshko

Solnyshko

Solnyshko

Associate
Joined
11 Dec 2003
Posts
599
Location
London
After struggling to get Vista to install as a dual boot alongside XP on my laptop, I gave up and upgraded my existing installation of XP.

The HDD is divided into two partitions of equal size, however now the second partition has vanished and is seen by vista as being a phantom optical drive :(
 
Last edited:
I would have told you to go to Manage under the right click menu of My Computer and go to disk management. But I'm not a Vista user so I'm lost. Might be woth a look?
 
Was the partition set as a dynamic disk in XP ?? - if you're using Vista Home Premium, it won't be able to see the dynamic disk. If this is the case, you'll need to back up the data somehow before converting it back to a basic disk, as it'll wipe the data in the process.

S.
 
type in "computer management" in the search box on the windows menu - open computer management, then "storage" you'll have access to the drives there.
 
Chrisp7 said:
type in "computer management" in the search box on the windows menu - open computer management, then "storage" you'll have access to the drives there.
Click to expand...

Well, alas I'm still struggling to get to the bottom of this.

As summed up in these two screen grabs...

2371568564_dd73eb3015_o.jpg


2371568572_5e72d709b4_o.jpg
 
shut the computer down, unplug the power lead for the drive, restart into vista, shut down, put the power lead back turn on again and it should recognise it as a proper dvd drive.
 
yeah I have rebooted, powered down etc but no dice.

Anyway it isn't a DVD drive, it's a 72GB partition I no longer have access to (!)
 
I had few partitions dissapear in Vista before. However, they were usually perfectly readable to XP and other OS's. You could try booting from knoppix cd and see if the partition is still visible outside Vista. If it is, you could just tar it and back it up to external drive, then reformat partition from scratch or extend your partition in Vista and untar all the data back. Alternatively you can use data recovery progs, like R-Studio to do the same from within Windows.
 
Thankfully there is nothing on this partition, so data loss isntat issue here - it's simply the loss of space (half my overall capacity!)

I've tried to format the partion from within Vista but get the repeating error:

2371568572_5e72d709b4_o.jpg


indeed under XP before the upgrade PartitionMagic was throwing read errors and was unable to change the size of this partition.

I read somewhere in the laptop literature that the bespoke (Samsung) XP install forces the user to make a second partition during the setup procedure. This, apparently fall back for system restores, is fixed and cannot be changed although I find this extraordinary – why would a laptop manufacturer hamper their product in this way?
 
ok, booted from gparted

weird: /dev/hda (149.05 GiB)

it sees the physical drive but no partitions (I think)

Partition: unallocated, Filesystem: unallocated

?

it's a 160GB drive which under XP at least (before the upgrade) was split into two equal sized partitions of 72GB each. After the upgrade to vista, only one of the partitions is available - But Gparted seems to think otherwise - it doesn’t seem to recognise anything. I should add I'm not familiar with Gparted or linux systems generally.
 
that's strange, gparted usually works perfectly, if it's not showing them, i wouldn't use that to change anything..

might be better off formatting completely, you've still got the recovery partition on the drive too
 
hmmm in that case what would be the best method of reformatting?

Is there a risk it wont boot if I dont have the laptop's IDE/mobo drivers loaded?
 
should be fine if it loaded ok last time, vista has a lot more drivers than xp

what make/model is it
 
bledd. said:
should be fine if it loaded ok last time, vista has a lot more drivers than xp
Click to expand...

Bear in mind it was an 'upgrade' rather than a clean install so might have 'borrowed' system info from the previous XP install.

Should i be taking some precautionary steps before wiping the drive?

Basically now I’m thinking of doing a clean install not using any of the recovery disks provided by Samsung. Rather I want to set up a dual boot system with XP & Vista, using my own disks – is this safe esp’ with regard to hardware drivers/controllers specific to this laptop model?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom