Hard drive gone?

Arsey

Arsey

Arsey

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Joined
28 Feb 2006
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Wimbledon
I was trying to make a recovery USB drive using my PC for my new Aspire One laptop, so I put the disc in and go through the steps, when I choose the USB drive it says it must format the drive, so I accept but then it gives me an Error message. My PC then restarts and boots up to windows. Then there is no "My Music" or "My Photos" link and "My Documents" doesn't open, these are all stored on my secondary hard drive. I open "My Computer" and the secondary hard drive is not displayed.

So somehow the Aspire One recovery problem has deleted/destroyed my secondary hard drive. Anybody any ideas on whats gone on and how to get my hard drive back? Surely trying to make a recovery USB drive can't destroy my hard drive?
 
My guess is the program has changed the USB drive letter to the same as the second HDD was, so Windows can't see it.
As said check in Disc Management, and make sure the second drive has the old letter, and the USB a spare letter.
 
Is Disc Management the same as Device Manager? In Device Manager I can see the two drives but can't see how to give them letters. I am using XP.
 
Arsey said:
Is Disc Management the same as Device Manager? In Device Manager I can see the two drives but can't see how to give them letters. I am using XP.
Click to expand...


No, right click 'My Computer' and select 'Manage' the click the Disk Management entry from the list down the left hand side.
 
OK thanks, the disc was not initialized so I initialized it, but it still says Unallocated. How do I go about doing this? Sorry if I'm being silly.
 
Yes, it is still being shown as unallocated. Is there not an option to make it D: or something?
 
Unallocated? sure you formated the right drive? sounds like you have wiped it or damaged the file allocation table/boot record.
 
I've just run the recovery program and there is nothing on the drive, should have ran it before trying to get the drive back really:(. Nothing essential has been lost, just a few thousand photos and loads of music :(

The odd thing is that I don't think the drive has been formatted because I have to format it to make a new partition it says. I guess the lesson here is to back up!
 
Untill you have actually run a data recovery tool on the drive you cannot say for certain that you have lost anything, all depends how much effort you want to make in recovering your stuff.
 
I just ran that one and it didn't find anything. Are you saying that other programs may be able to recover some things?
 
You need to do "surface scan" when MBR and file table are gone.
So did you try find lost data/drive options?

Basing to description in first post that automatic tool of data destruction shouldn't have had time for formatting which includes overwriting data.
 
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