Partition disappeared

[Tausif Alam]

Hi everyone,

I am in critical situation. After reinstalling windows xp, harddisk
partition other then C has been disappeared.

At Computer Management --> Disk Management I can see the unallocated space.
But as per my old partition setup it must be distributed to three other
partitions.

Could any guru please help, how can I recover my partitions with the data.

Thank you,

Tausif

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I am in critical situation. After reinstalling windows xp, harddisk
partition other then C has been disappeared.

At Computer Management --> Disk Management I can see the
unallocated space. But as per my old partition setup it must be
distributed to three other partitions.

Could any guru please help, how can I recover my partitions with
the data.

You did a clean installation of Windows XP?

For what reason? (I ask because depending on your reasoning - the damage
could have been done by that reason before the format/installation.)

How many physical disk drives do you have? Are these three other partitions
on another hard disk drive than your C partition - or are they all on one
physical hard disk drive?

When you did the clean installation - were you careful not to touch the
other partitions or were you even asked? In other words - when you
installed Windows XP - did you get to choose the partition Windows XP would
be installed upon or did the process just run without much input from you?

You say you can see the 'unallocated space' - is that what it says in disk
management? Unallocated?

How about your backups - were they far enough behind that you really need to
recover the partitions with the data intact or could you rebuild the
partitions and restore the data from backups and be okay? After all - if
you performed a clean installation - you'd figure the first thing you do
would be refresh your backups before beginning unless (see the 'for what
reason' query) you were taken by surprise and had no way to do a refresh of
your backups before you began - but at least then you would have the last
backup set - what was the frequency of your backups?

 

[Tausif Alam]

Hi Shenan,

Thankx a lot for helping me out at this critical situation. Please find my
answer below (next to each question).

You did a clean installation of Windows XP? Yes...

For what reason? (I ask because depending on your reasoning - the damage
could have been done by that reason before the format/installation.)

Due to Virus, I have done the clean reinstallation. During setup I have
seleted to format only Drive C.
Please not: during windows xp setup I was not able to see other partitions.

How many physical disk drives do you have? Are these three other
partitions on another hard disk drive than your C partition - or are they
all on one physical hard disk drive?

I have only one Physical Drive at my Laptop of 500GB. I have made multiple
partitions. Other then C all other partitions has been disappeared.

When you did the clean installation - were you careful not to touch the
other partitions or were you even asked? In other words - when you
installed Windows XP - did you get to choose the partition Windows XP
would be installed upon or did the process just run without much input
from you?

Yes, at the time of reinstallation, I was quite carefull not to touch other
paritions. I am quite confirm about it because the drive C is of 128GB at
the time of reinstallation, I saw its 128GB.

You say you can see the 'unallocated space' - is that what it says in disk
management? Unallocated?

Yes... at disk management I can see the unallocated space. Its the space
that I had allocated to other patitions. It also confirms that I only
reinstalled XP only at partition C.

How about your backups - were they far enough behind that you really need
to recover the partitions with the data intact or could you rebuild the
partitions and restore the data from backups and be okay? After all - if
you performed a clean installation - you'd figure the first thing you do
would be refresh your backups before beginning unless (see the 'for what
reason' query) you were taken by surprise and had no way to do a refresh
of your backups before you began - but at least then you would have the
last backup set - what was the frequency of your backups?

I dont have backup at all of other drive. The contact that I had at C were
backup at drive D which I no longer able to see it.

 

[neil]

What version of XP did you use to carry out the clean install.? And could
you see the other partitions listed during the install.
Neil

Hi Shenan,

Thankx a lot for helping me out at this critical situation. Please find my
answer below (next to each question).

You did a clean installation of Windows XP? Yes...

For what reason? (I ask because depending on your reasoning - the damage
could have been done by that reason before the format/installation.)

Due to Virus, I have done the clean reinstallation. During setup I have
seleted to format only Drive C.
Please not: during windows xp setup I was not able to see other
partitions.

How many physical disk drives do you have? Are these three other
partitions on another hard disk drive than your C partition - or are they
all on one physical hard disk drive?

I have only one Physical Drive at my Laptop of 500GB. I have made multiple
partitions. Other then C all other partitions has been disappeared.

When you did the clean installation - were you careful not to touch the
other partitions or were you even asked? In other words - when you
installed Windows XP - did you get to choose the partition Windows XP
would be installed upon or did the process just run without much input
from you?

Yes, at the time of reinstallation, I was quite carefull not to touch
other paritions. I am quite confirm about it because the drive C is of
128GB at the time of reinstallation, I saw its 128GB.

You say you can see the 'unallocated space' - is that what it says in
disk management? Unallocated?

Yes... at disk management I can see the unallocated space. Its the space
that I had allocated to other patitions. It also confirms that I only
reinstalled XP only at partition C.

How about your backups - were they far enough behind that you really need
to recover the partitions with the data intact or could you rebuild the
partitions and restore the data from backups and be okay? After all - if
you performed a clean installation - you'd figure the first thing you do
would be refresh your backups before beginning unless (see the 'for what
reason' query) you were taken by surprise and had no way to do a refresh
of your backups before you began - but at least then you would have the
last backup set - what was the frequency of your backups?

I dont have backup at all of other drive. The contact that I had at C were
backup at drive D which I no longer able to see it.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I am in critical situation. After reinstalling windows xp, harddisk
partition other then C has been disappeared.

At Computer Management --> Disk Management I can see the
unallocated space. But as per my old partition setup it must be
distributed to three other partitions.

Could any guru please help, how can I recover my partitions with
the data.

You did a clean installation of Windows XP?

For what reason? (I ask because depending on your reasoning - the
damage could have been done by that reason before the
format/installation.)
How many physical disk drives do you have? Are these three other
partitions on another hard disk drive than your C partition - or
are they all on one physical hard disk drive?

When you did the clean installation - were you careful not to touch
the other partitions or were you even asked? In other words - when
you installed Windows XP - did you get to choose the partition
Windows XP would be installed upon or did the process just run
without much input from you?
You say you can see the 'unallocated space' - is that what it says
in disk management? Unallocated?

How about your backups - were they far enough behind that you
really need to recover the partitions with the data intact or could
you rebuild the partitions and restore the data from backups and be
okay? After all - if you performed a clean installation - you'd
figure the first thing you do would be refresh your backups before
beginning unless (see the 'for what reason' query) you were taken
by surprise and had no way to do a refresh of your backups before
you began - but at least then you would have the last backup set -
what was the frequency of your backups?

Thankx a lot for helping me out at this critical situation. Please
find my answer below (next to each question).

Due to Virus, I have done the clean reinstallation. During setup I
have seleted to format only Drive C.
Please not: during windows xp setup I was not able to see other
partitions.
I have only one Physical Drive at my Laptop of 500GB. I have made
multiple partitions. Other then C all other partitions has been
disappeared.
Yes, at the time of reinstallation, I was quite carefull not to
touch other paritions. I am quite confirm about it because the
drive C is of 128GB at the time of reinstallation, I saw its 128GB.

Yes... at disk management I can see the unallocated space. Its the
space that I had allocated to other patitions. It also confirms
that I only reinstalled XP only at partition C.

I dont have backup at all of other drive. The contact that I had at
C were backup at drive D which I no longer able to see it.

What version of XP did you use to carry out the clean install.? And
could you see the other partitions listed during the install.

Sounds like you used a pre-SP1 installation media to install Windows XP.

You got it patches to SP3 yet?

 

[neil]

Shenan
Is it possible that a pre SP1 installation disk would not understand any
partitions greater than 128G and therefore corrupt the extended partition. ?
Neil

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Is it possible that a pre SP1 installation disk would not
understand any partitions greater than 128G and therefore corrupt
the extended partition?

Although it should have touched them - it could have had some pretty bad
effects. It was the fact that the size was 128GB specifically that made me
think the pre-SP1 thing. If the partition before was larger (the first one)
and Windows XP has not been updated to SP1a or above, it may not be able to
accurately access the other partitions yet and/or the creation of the 128GB
partition on the drive when it used to be larger could have scrambled the
NTFS or File Allocation Tables (depending on how they were formatted.)

Something like TESTDISK might help.

 

[Richard]

Sounds like you used a pre-SP1 installation media to install Windows XP.

You got it patches to SP3 yet?

Hi Shenan,

It sounds like the virus or malware had already corrupted the partition
table on the OP's (Original Poster's) disk so that Windows XP installation
could not see any partitions. If the original "C" partition was 128 GB,
and the new XP installation only used the first 128 GB for its "C" volume,
and only formatted that part of the disk, the data on the rest of the disk
may still be there.

Is there a way the OP could repair the partition table?

Is there a way to access/recover sectors in unallocated space?

FWIW. --Richard