What happened to my F drive
in [Windows XP]
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From: PA Bear [MS MVP] on 26 Feb 2010 02:08 Maybe a dingo ate your F drive? lennox wrote: > I had two drives an F and a C drive. Now when I check my computer I only > have a C drive ,what happened to my F drive......
From: Nil on 26 Feb 2010 12:21 On 26 Feb 2010, "PA Bear [MS MVP]" <PABearMVP(a)gmail.com> wrote in microsoft.public.windowsxp.general: > Maybe a dingo ate your F drive? Starring Meryl Streep!
From: lennox on 26 Feb 2010 11:43
]lennox wrote:[color=blue][i] I had two separate hard drives C and F there was a reason why it was called F,but I don't remember .I had this for several years. Lately I have been having trouble booting up Internet explorer.. Sometimes it won't boot up at all.... First, it helps to know how many physical drives you actually have. The things with the letters, like "C:" and "F:" are partitions, or a portion of a hard drive. A single partition can span the size of the entire drive, or a drive can be split into multiple partitions of some size. -------------- Single drive | C: | F: | single drive, two partitions -------------- ------ Two drives | C: | two separate drives with ------ one partition on each one. ------ | F: | ------ If you go to Start: Settings: Control Panel: Administrative Tools: Computer Management and run the Disk Management item, you'll get some kind of picture of your hard drives and the partitions on them. If you see what looks like a partition, and there isn't any information displayed for it, the partition could be damaged and the file system may no longer be mounting. If you don't see a partition at all, and you only see "C:" plus a bunch of empty space, then you're in a bit more trouble. You really need someone with some knowledge about computers, to help you out now. Perhaps, if you can describe what you see in Disk Management, maybe someone can suggest how to find F:. There are tools you can use, but you have to know a bit about how disks work, to use a tool like this safely. This one, for example, can scan a disk, find a lost partition, and build a partition table. But then, you, as the operator of the program, have to use your judgment, as to whether what this program comes up with, is correct or not. And that isn't always an easy thing to determine. This isn't a "magic bullet", but it is free. On one of my disks here, it found a partition I removed some time ago, so in some sense, it can be "too good" at what it does, for all usages. About 50% of the time, I have to reject the new partition table this program comes up with, due to issues I may have created myself. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk The thing is, when you work on a disk (expert or otherwise), there is always a danger of erasing something or making a mistake you'll later regret. The safest action, is to stop using a computer when something like this happens, and find local help. A knowledgeable friend, or a local computer shop. While there may be nice programs around, that promise to find all your data, you have no way of knowing what they're about to do. One thing I advocate, is copying the affected disk, sector by sector, to a backup disk. That backup disk, is then your copy for safekeeping. Then, if you make a mistake trying to recover F:, you have something to fall back on. I learned this the hard way, when I used a tool written at work, to recover data, and instead, it erased the data. I've been skeptical of utility writers and their skills, ever since :-( Backups are your friend, no matter when you decide to do them. And when a partition is fried, a sector by sector backup is the kind you want to make, of the entire disk, so you have a copy of the (damaged) goods. Paul -- lennox |