Missing HD partition

[Guest]

My HD was partitioned by the manufacturer, into a C drive (smallish) and a D
drive (largeish). In attempting to install some Norton software, I got error
messages regarding an uninstall, then was told the installation was complete,
and to restart. When I did, the computer started cycling through the startup.
Attempting to repair got me the message "Windows XP cannot recognize the
partition you selected." A housecall-repair person finally got Windows to
recognize the C partition (where the Windows software is located), but it
still doesn't "see" the D drive. Device Manager says the disk (C) is fine,
but it doesn't see D either. Any suggestions?

 

[Guest]

C: should be the larger partition,some mfgs have made a small partition to
keep the reinstallation files on it (backup).Either way,go to
run,type:diskmgmt.msc
In msc all drives and partitions should show,if the one youre looking for
is posted,
L.click the partition,go to actions,all,select,"make active" close out
msc.If it
doesnt show,go to run,type:cmd In cmd typeiskPart In DiskPart type:
list disk type:list volume type:HELP For all cmds Type:EXIT When thru

 

[Guest]

Andrew, thanks. I ran diskmgmt, and it shows the part of the disk that used
to be D is now considered "unallocated". If I do the "diskpart", will that
erase any of my data that used to be on the D drive?

I don't know if it matters, but there is also a smaller, un-named partition,
which is listed as (EISA Config).

Thanks again.

 

[Anna]

Andrew, thanks. I ran diskmgmt, and it shows the part of the disk that
used
to be D is now considered "unallocated". If I do the "diskpart", will that
erase any of my data that used to be on the D drive?

I don't know if it matters, but there is also a smaller, un-named
partition,
which is listed as (EISA Config).

Thanks again.

Michelle:
Forget about using the Diskpart command. Your problem has nothing to do with
anything that command will "fix".

From your description of what Disk Management reflects concerning your D:
drive (partition), I'm afraid that whatever data was on that partition is
gone. How it happened is impossible to tell at this point but that's really
beside the point at this time. There are various "data recovery programs"
available that may resurrect some or all of that data; the better ones can
be quite expensive. Then there are commercial entities who specialize in
retrieving lost data from a hard drive, but as you can imagine their
services are *very* expensive.

So the question is how important to you was the data on that D: drive, and
do you want to spend time trying to recover that data? If you can live
without it I would say forget about it as long as your system is presently
functional in that you can boot without any problems and access all
programs/data on your C: drive. Should this be the case, you can use the
Disk Management utility to partition & format that "unallocated" disk space
and simply use it as a separate partition for storage, backup, etc.
Anna

 

[Guest]

Thanks, Anna. Time to call it a loss of data, and move on.