HD has suddenly become unallocated

bubblelegend · 19 Nov 2006 at 15:20

I put in a second 300gb HD in a few months ago for data and everything was running fine, if a little slower. After defragging my main HD for programs, the second 300gb one now appears to be unallocated. It has all my data on it and I dont want to have to reformat for it to be recognized.
I'm not really sure what I should do. The same thing happened the 1st ime i defragged my main hd, but i just reformatted for it to be shown. I didnt think anything off it but it might have caused it even though i cant see why it should.
Any help will be much appreciated
Cheers

rpstewart · 19 Nov 2006 at 16:30

Can you describe "unallocated" a bit more. Is there just nothing showing when you open the drive from My Computer or are you getting an error message?

mctiny · 19 Nov 2006 at 17:10

rpstewart said:
Can you describe "unallocated" a bit more. Is there just nothing showing when you open the drive from My Computer or are you getting an error message?

I think the OP is referring to withing device management\disk management.

I've had something like this ages ago nad it was down to a power issue, not enough power to be presice.

I think I had it when my drives were converted to dynamic drives as well.

bubblelegend · 19 Nov 2006 at 22:54

yep its in the disk management sectionw where is says unallocated. If i get a better power supply would it revert it back to being healthy or would i have to reformat again?
Is it possible to regain the data on there. There was only about 30gig of data on it.
Also just to have extra back up, I'm tempted to get an external hard drive like the western digital 320gb premium on this site. Is it any good or are there more reliable ones?
cheers again guys

mctiny · 19 Nov 2006 at 22:56

bubblelegend said:
yep its in the disk management sectionw where is says unallocated. If i get a better power supply would it revert it back to being healthy or would i have to reformat again?
Is it possible to regain the data on there. There was only about 30gig of data on it.
Also just to have extra back up, I'm tempted to get an external hard drive like the western digital 320gb premium on this site. Is it any good or are there more reliable ones?
cheers again guys

I'd get hold of some disk recovery software before you do anything as the data is probably still there and it's just the fat table thats screwed up.

bubblelegend · 25 Nov 2006 at 19:39

Can anyone recommend good recovery programs for this problem?
preferably free?
would the data be able to be recovered onto a new external hard drive? to minimize the risk of it overwriting files on the existing hard drive
cheers for the help

silversurfer · 26 Nov 2006 at 05:38

Runtime software - GetDataBack for NTFS

Its not free but its very good. I have had the same thing, its just the data table. In my case power fluctuation caused the drive to power down mid use. It wont restore the drive but it will recover the files to where ever you like.