Help Needed Pls - Moving HDD Space from Logical to Primary Failed - Lost Logical Space =(
Hello Hopefully someone here can assist. I have a Samsung F1 SATA 750GB drive partitioned into 3 drives, a primary 50GB for Win 7 and 2 logicals (one for games and one for music). The music partition was 477GB in total with 200GB of music on it. I was taking 50GB off that via creating un-used space & then adding it onto the Win 7 primary. Once that was done Acronis advised me to reboot, which I did. Once rebooted it went to the usual black screen and was sitting at 25% for some time so I went downstairs to watch TV for 2 hours. When I came back up my monitor had no signal from my PC and the fans were going full blast? HDD light was on solid...nothing would give me any feedback on my screen etc. So I had a shower and came back to the same thing. My only option was to reset the PC&. It booted up fine HOWEVER my 477GB drive is completely WIPED showing Logical, Healthy & Not Formatted. I tried the recovery tool and it could find nothing!? Please tell me I have some options here...it has taken me months to transfer LP's and CD's to my PC, years to collect all of it, and some of my music was VERY obscure and rare....I will pass out if I have lost it all due to this error =( Cheers in advance for the help!
It's always best to create an Entire Disk Image backup prior to making any partitioning changes. This is an important step regardless of which partitioning software you use. There is always the chance of data loss. It's also best to do procedures like this when booted to the DD CD or from WinPE instead of letting DD reboot Windows. This gives you control over every step and allows to see what's working and what's not. Status in "reboot mode" doesn't always display correctly.
Is it correct that the C: partition is still at its original size?
Moving 50GB of data can take a long time. Usually, it's best to not abort the procedure if there's a chance it was still working (hard drive still making noise, for example). However, sometimes there is no choice. I'm not sure what the case was here.
If the Logical partition is still existing, have you tried deleting it (don't wipe it) and then using the Recovery Wizard to see if it can find the "formatted" partition?
Otherwise, you will probably need to starting scanning the drive with file recovery programs and see if you can find your data.
Hello
Cheers for the reply. Yeah C is still the same size and the 50GB separate partition is gone and now once again merged with the 477GB partition. That partition shows up as "Local Disk" but not yet formatted etc so I cannot access it. So try deleting it and see if I can access the contents?
Sad thing is...I created the 50GB partition 1st and it was done, no asking for reboot and the 477GB drive was then 427GB and all my music was intact on that newly sized drive. So really all that was needed was to merge that empty 50GB onto my OS C drive that had 20GB of free space (50GB total). Not sure how or why that newly created 50GB partition joined back to the music partition and wiped it all...?
Thanks
So I deleted it and Acronis found no drives to recover...the recovery program is a little useless if it cannot find an unallocated 477GB partition....
Should I try to create a partition out of that space now or?
Can you post a screenshot of what DD shows? It may help to see it.
Which type of scan did you run, Automatic or Manual (Fast or Complete)?
I just ran it again after a few reboots and it found the 427GB partition and all music is intact!!! WOOT! I was just about to format too...whew. Thanks for you being the only one to assist. Now how do you suggest I merge that additional 50GB onto my C drive?
I would recommend you create a backup image of the drive or at least backup your important files before making any further changes.
If you post a screenshot of what DD shows it would help in providing you with instructions.
Sure thing....here is a screen shot. Thanks again
Since the 50GB is located at the end of the drive it needs to be "moved" to right after C:.
DD can do this, but it will have to move a lot of data. You have room to copy off the data from F: and G: (to D:). You could do that and then delete F: and G:. Once that was done, resize C: larger 52GB and recreate F: and G:. Doing it manually, step-by-step is better (in my opinion) than setting DD up to run it automatically -- too much data is involved.
You could also just use DD to resize/move G: to the end of the drive and then resize/move F: up to the left edge of G:. Finally, resize C: into the unallocated space. If you do this, commit the changes after each step -- don't do everything and then commit the changes as it puts DD into auto-mode with a ton of data to relocate.
Could I add that unallocated 50GB back onto G then transfer it to F. Once transferred then create the additional 50GB as unallocated and add it onto C afterwards? Or was that what you were saying?
No matter how you do it, the data in F: and G: has to be moved -- physical space has to be recovered between C: and F:. The main thing is to have the data backed up in case anything goes wrong. The partitions need moved to the end of the drive to place the unallocated space right after C:. This means about 318GB of data needs moved 50GB over.
Adding the 50GB back to G: won't solve anything. It needs to be like this:
So merge F & G then create the 50GB of free space out of that, OK. However won't the 50GB's end up at the end again anyway?
Don't Merge F: and G:. I don't even know why you're thinking that.
Right-click on G: and select Resize volume. In the graphic at the top, grab the partition and move it all the way to the right. This will move the unallocated space to before the G: partition. Click OK and then Commit the change.
After that move has finished, do the same for the F: partition. The unallocated space should now be between the C: partition and the F: partition. You can then resize C:.
Haha I did it the easiest way. My ZE CRACK drive (games) I formatted along with my BLISS drive (Music but I moved that folder to the VAULT 1st). Then I merged the two drives into one big empty drive and unallocated 50GB (no data to move on an empty drive so whether it was before or after woudl have little difference). Then added it to C and rebooted. 3 mins later it was done...now transferring back my music to my re-partitioned drives again via games and tunes. All good man. Cheers for the help, it was much needed and appreciated!