May have lost 150BG of data!!

**Jeddyb** · 04-25-2009

Hey guys. I have Windows 7 Build 7000 (64-bit) and I have a bit of a problem. I was sorting some stuff in disk management and I noticed I had an extra, 1000MB partition on my 200GB media hard drive and I right clicked it to delete it. It told me that it would erase all data on the partition and I meh'ed because I knew nothing was on it. Then when I tried to proceed, it told me it was currently in use and asked if I wanted to force delete it anyway, so I did. Then the whole space for that hard drive was completely unallocated. I wtf'd and after a restart I tried adding a drive letter, which made it show up as a hard drive, but now, under file system, it says RAW instead of NTFS and when I try to open the drive from Computer, it says I need to format the drive before I can use it!!!! OMG!!! Is there any possible way to restore the drive to a working state without losing all of my data? :'-(
It had only about 40 gigs of space left. All the rest of the space was full with a bunch of media, but also all of my latest and 64-bit drivers and tons of apps and updates for games and stuff. 150 gigs!!!!!!
If there is no way, then it's not the end of the world, but if there is anything I can do, I would deeply appreciate any help.

**covaloch** · 04-25-2009

I don't know about partitions that well, but if you want to save the data and then do a reformat it shouldnt be too hard to retrieve the data.

Here's what I do anyway:
Go to a friend's house, download/burn a copy of the ubuntu live cd (Yes I know its linux, but don't worry. It's idiot proof)
After burning out the cd, put it in your CD rom, and boot your system. there's should be an option now to boot ubuntu. Choose the 'I want to test out ubuntu without changing anything' option (I can't recall the exact wording but there's an option to that effect). It'll load the whole OS into your ram. Anyway once ubuntu boots, check out your hard disks, the data should be there, save whatever you want on a thumbdrive or burn it out or xfer to a portable hard disk, and viola~ data saved. You can proceed to format your harddisk and reinstall windows, etc.

**Jeddyb** · 04-25-2009

Hey, thanks very much for your reply. I think in the haste, I didn't explain my situation very clearly. I still have my main hard drive with operating system running fine and am working off it now. It's just that now I can't access my media hard drive (second hdd) without formatting it. So, like, its there in the My Computer list, but I can't open it because it's RAW.
I do have a bit of a feeling I may have already lost the data on the disk by force the deletion of the partition. Prior to messing with it, I'm pretty sure it was split into 3 partitions, but working together as a dynamic disk, so as to seem like one partition, and so deleting one part of it may have rendered the data unreadable.

**reghakr** · 04-26-2009

I also wondered why people were talking about a 100GB partition.

I never came across this myself, but found it in a previous post, that this partition is created when you do an upgrade. I never go the upgrade option, I always reformat the C: drive from a true command prompt.

To be honest I can't tell you exactly what it's for, but in Disk Management, if it tells you it's in use, it;s a very bad idea to delete it.

Did you install programs to that partition?

The best way would be a "clean" install. If you have other partitions on your hard drive, the install will not format them and your files will remain. However, you'll need to re-install those programs because the registry contains no information about these programs and they will not run

**whoosh** · 04-26-2009

How to avoid the partition :

How to Avoid 200MB Hidden System Partition From Been Created During Windows 7 Installation Â» My Digital Life

**Jeddyb** · 04-26-2009

It's alright now guys. I spoke to somebody and it seems like the data was lost anyway so I've reformatted the drive. It's not too bad though, I should be able to get alot of the stuff back. Thanks very much for all of your help though! Greatly appreciated.