Storage Hard Drive has become unallocated overnight!?

[SazBard]

I have two hard drives, both SATA.

1 x Maxtor 160gb with Windows 7 64bit
1 x Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB divided into two partitions. One for Games, the other for music, pictures, cr4p.

Yesterday it was all working fine and dandy listening to my music. Shut down the computer.
Today I start it up and now the samsung is not showing in my computer and in drive management it has become unallocated. WTF?

Has the MBR become corrupted or something?
What can I do to get my stuff back.

Thanks.

I have exams tomorrow, this is the last thing I needed.

[bulldogjeff]

it's not the mrb because you can still boot ok, has it lost the drive letters? if it has try allocating a new drive letter in device manager this will liven the disk up again and you should be able to access it , just don't let it format.

[SazBard]

Originally Posted by bulldogjeff

it's not the mrb because you can still boot ok, has it lost the drive letters? if it has try allocating a new drive letter in device manager this will liven the disk up again and you should be able to access it , just don't let it format.

Hi,

Thanks for the quick response, however I do not have an option to assign a drive letter. Windows is seeing the drive as an unformatted harddrive. The only option I get is Initialize.

[deathtaker27]

did you check its all plugged in and connected correctly?

[SazBard]

Originally Posted by deathtaker27

did you check its all plugged in and connected correctly?

Yep, all plugged in.

[SazBard]

With pure luck more than judgement I found an application called TestDisk, a very small utility. The program found my partitions and re-wrote them to the drive, it told me to reboot which I did and lo and behold they are now there!

I have no clue how they disappeared but now they seem to be working, looks like TestDisk saved me from cr4ploads of hassle!

Linky:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

[confusis]

Backup. Now!

[sandman3x]

Originally Posted by SazBard

I have two hard drives, both SATA.

1 x Maxtor 160gb with Windows 7 64bit
1 x Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB divided into two partitions. One for Games, the other for music, pictures, cr4p.

Yesterday it was all working fine and dandy listening to my music. Shut down the computer.
Today I start it up and now the samsung is not showing in my computer and in drive management it has become unallocated. WTF?

Has the MBR become corrupted or something?
What can I do to get my stuff back.

Thanks.

I have exams tomorrow, this is the last thing I needed.

[sandman3x]

TestDisk - CGSecurity is the only way to go. And, it's free!