Lost partition

[Petipit]

I am using Xp home. My hard drive is 160g divided in 2
partition 149g for my "c drive" and 10g for my "d backup
drive" My system came preinstall with XP home oem. I used
partition majic to split my drive, up to this part
everything was fine and work fine for months. But
recently I had to reinstall XP and after the
reinstalation was completed window does not see the "D
Backup drive" anymore but only my "C drive" of 149g. I
tried to look into MyComputer>Manage>Disk Managements
nothing there either. Is there a way that I can make
window see the 10g drive again. I dont understand why
this happen I did reinstalation before on another system
and window never affected the other partition except for
the C drive where it install itself.
After the reinstalation was completed window was
reinstall on the C drive brand spanking new but it could
see the other partition. Now it cant.

I hope someone can help me with this.

 

[André Gulliksen]

I am using Xp home. My hard drive is 160g divided in 2
partition 149g for my "c drive" and 10g for my "d backup
drive" My system came preinstall with XP home oem. I used
partition majic to split my drive, up to this part
everything was fine and work fine for months. But
recently I had to reinstall XP and after the
reinstalation was completed window does not see the "D
Backup drive" anymore but only my "C drive" of 149g. I
tried to look into MyComputer>Manage>Disk Managements
nothing there either. Is there a way that I can make
window see the 10g drive again. I dont understand why
this happen I did reinstalation before on another system
and window never affected the other partition except for
the C drive where it install itself.
After the reinstalation was completed window was
reinstall on the C drive brand spanking new but it could
see the other partition. Now it cant.

Before I continue: Are you absolutely positively sure that after you split
your drive the sizes of your new partitions were 149 GB and 10 GB? The
reason I ask is that hard drives that the manufacturers state to be 160 GB
are actually 160 * 1000^3 bytes, while operating systems and most programs
consider one GB to be 1024^3. Thus a 160 * 1000^3 hard drive would be
considered only 149 * 1024^3 by the operating system. Do you see any (10 GB)
free space in disk management? If not, I would assume that your
reinstallation has repartitioned and reformatted your entire drive, and all
hope for a resurrection is lost.

Now, assuming you indeed had two partitions of 149 GB and 10 GB, and you
only lost the last one:

Since your C: is still 149 GB your remaining 10 GBs are most likely
untouched. I.e. only the entry for your 10 GB partition has beed deleted
from the partition table. The trick is to put this back into place. I have
done something like this once using http://www.ranish.com/part/

Put this program on an MS-DOS boot diskette and run it. You will (hopefully)
see a 10 GB free space at the end of the drive. Here you will have to create
a new partition with _excactly_ the same properties as the one you are
missing (NTFS/FAT, primary/logical etc). Also, you do not under any
circumstances format the drive. If I remember correctly you will be given
the options of running a full format (big no no!), quick format (no no) or
no format. Select the latter, reboot and cross your fingers.

Caveat: I am not sure if running Ranish off a boot disk will support disks
larger than 128 GiB.

Disclaimer: The tips given here might or might not work. Whatever happens to
your computer, it's not my responsibility.