Windows XP Help Urgently Needed!!

**Macflurry** · 01-25-2007, 01:53 PM

I'm having some serious HDD problems at the minute that are a bit beyond my level of experience!! I have a 40Gb HDD on my laptop that is partitioned for 6Gb and 34Gb. Over the last year and a half the 6Gb part with the OS in has slowly filled up and it's mostly stuff that I need.

I've got my hands on a copy of Partition Magic 8 and tried to repartition the C and D drives. I've never used it before and after changing the sizes to what I want (9 & 31Gb) the drives to be clicked start. The program went throughthe motions and when it had finished said I needed to restart for the changes to take effect.

The laptop powered off then back on and the screen went black but the HDD sounded like it was carrying out some functions from the program but then sat at a low idle not sounding like it was writing anything. As I wasnt too sure what to expect I left it half an hour then when I came back it was still doing the same.

When I rebooted the laptop it got to the windows screen with the bar runing across the bottom then after a few secons of normal booting the screen goes black and nothing happens. I left this for about 20 minutes, rebooted the computer and it went blank again but just as I pressed the power button the windows shutdown menu appeared then went to my desktop!?!?

After going into my computer the C drive is there but no D drive. When I go into administrative tools it shows the C drive fine and the D drive as a healthy unknown partition.

Is there a way to reassign a drive letter to my D drive without losing the stuff that's already on there?? It's mostly my music and old course work that I need off it as the programs are easier to replace.

Any help on this is massively appreciated!!

**mezz64** · 01-25-2007, 08:21 PM

You'll need some data recovery software, Pmagic most likely foobared the partition table but not the data. Do a quick google search or browse through downloads.com for some options.

**dupa2** · 01-25-2007, 08:38 PM

you can make that partition visible under windows, try to use computer management/disk managment tool to assign drive letter (create partition) but do not format it. It may just pop, if not, you'll need some recovery soft to access your data.

If you're familiar with linux (basic), you can try to mount that partition, and copy your files to another drive, in 75% cases it works just fine.

**Black_Sheep** · 01-25-2007, 09:16 PM

If its really pooched you can try SpinRite from Gibson Research http://www.grc.com.

**Macflurry** · 01-26-2007, 04:41 AM

Cheers for your help guys, the computer management only gives the option to delete the logical drive but I'll try the recovery software route.

**tiagoc** · 01-26-2007, 07:57 AM

that's why i don't trust any resize tool!

if there's a need to resize C: because there's no space left, that's probably because it's already full of junk, after some years of use :P so, the best thing to do is get a coffee, play some nice calm music on the stereo, make some backups and reinstall everything (and take that time to upgrade to latest versions of all the software used)

the easy path is not always the best one...

**Macflurry** · 01-26-2007, 08:39 AM

The partition has filled up over time but it's all stuff that I use/need for various things. It's more my music that I'm annoyed at losing as anything else can be re-installed.

The worst bit is that I'd just bought a USB HDD and backed up everything but my music (it was on the list of things to do!!). But then I needed some work doing urgently and had to try PM to save some time.

Ended up taking a lot longer after this!!

**tja** · 01-27-2007, 08:07 AM

always defrag before adjusting partitions!

i use getdataback to recover my lost data....

**Macflurry** · 01-27-2007, 06:09 PM

Cheers guys, I've got a few avenues to try now. I've got a friend whos offered to give me Active@ when I see him, but ideally I'd like this done sooner!!

Cheers for the links black sheep and tja, I'll have a read into these ones and see what I can find.

**blackpacu** · 01-27-2007, 08:16 PM

i highly recommend what tja said. getdataback from runtime.org
i have used getdataback For NTFS a few times to pull data from drives for people and have always had good results.