Solved Hard drive problems

Hello,
I really messed up my hard drives trying to make my new computer a duel boot laptop. I have an I7-3630qm processor, 2 hard drives, Nvidia gt675mx vidio card and windows 8. I foolishly tried several times to get a linux os to boot, was not happening, and I locked the whole computer. would not boot from cd drive or anything. I paid to fix this problem, they reinstaled windows 8, but looking at my hard drives now one should be 750GB and the other should be 128GB a SSD. I have nothing on this laptop I care to save just want to get the partitions that vanished back. I have tried to use EaseUS Partition I saw mentioned in other posts, but to no avail. In my Computer Management window Disk D: is showing 698.64GB and disk C: is showing 118.90GB with an unallocated 351 MB?
Help Please

If I'm reading this right, you paid someone to fix it (nothing wrong with that), then reinstalled windows 8. If this is correct, then when the OS was reinstalled the drives where erased/wiped clean. It's now as if you have a brand new laptop with all the factory setting. There is no way now to retrieve any of the data. If you want the partitions back, only the partitions, you can just re-partition the drives as you had them.

???

Their was no data or any thing on that laptop both the hard drives shank and I would like to get the size back. 750GB and 128GB. I have an old barly working Vista system this new laptop I want to get working well before I move my stuff over. can I just do a re format for the whole drives and the reinstall windows 8. 750GB drive is now reading 698.64GB and 128GB drive reading 351MB and 118.90GB.

screen shot

Ghod what a Clusterfook. that 698gb partition is your 750 Gigger - Is this a Seagate Hybrid drive? I got one just like it.

That 351 MB partition is your Grub partition- It's needed to boot Windows Vista/7/8 - Delete it at your peril. Windows Vista through 8 reverse about 100MB out of the boot partition to hold a grub installer.

(Actually that's what I thought, but I think Windows 8 is different and uses the whole drive - I'll have to look at a Windows 7 system I just got in)

Yep I was right - Windows 8 seems to use all of the partition it is on - Windows 7 always wants to reserve exactly 100MB for some kind of Loader. I know for a fact, my computer here, on a 320GB partition, always had a 100MB space always unallocated. But after upgrading to Windows 8 it is no longer there.

So that 300 MB may be some kind of recovery partition, or, the remains of your Unix OS. - Windows 8 would not be able to recognize it.

118 GB is about right for a "128GB" drive. My "120GB" Intel SSD shows 111GB in My Computer.

Stolen from Hardforum.com:

"One gigabyte in binary is 1,073,741,824 bytes (2^30), but in decimal it’s only 1,000,000,000 bytes (10^9), which is a difference of 73,741,824 bytes (~70MB).
So, when we're talking about storage size in gigabytes a hard drive's capacity as reported by the OS will be about 7% less than what is advertised by the hard drive manufacturer."

As was said, your disk capacities in binary are correct. But you got another problem. Your C partition is dynamic. That is not normal. You better reconvert that partition to primary.

Use the Partition Wizard 4.2.2. (pw422) which you can download from here. This is an .iso which you have to burn to CD. Then boot with this CD and convert. Here is a little tutorial on how to do that. Make sure you have an image of C before you manipulate it.

whs said:

Your C partition is dynamic. That is not normal. You better reconvert that partition to primary.

Use the Partition Wizard 4.2.2. (pw422) which you can download from here. This is an .iso which you have to burn to CD. Then boot with this CD and convert. Here is a little tutorial on how to do that. Make sure you have an image of C before you manipulate it.

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Ya hes right, whoever set that drive up did it the wrong way for a System drive. It can cause you BIG problems if the drive develops read element failure, I've had Dynamic partitions just up and vanish before- and all of my recovery techniques don't work on drives partitioned that way.

Thank You

I downloaded Partition wizard professional, home version does not have the functionality, and fixed my problem.

Bing89 said:

I downloaded Partition wizard professional, home version does not have the functionality, and fixed my problem.

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I am afraid I do not understand. Did it or did it not fix the problem with the dynamic partition.

My guess is, the Home version cannot convert a Dynamic Drive. It's still a good program, it's what I use - I never partition my drives Dynamically Once I lost 400 Gigs of irrecoverable Music Data on a drive - Months of work gone in a second and no way to get it back.

poorly worded respons

Yes, it did fix the problem. I was just complaining I had to pay for the upgraded program in order to fix it.

It's worth it - You can do a lot of stuff with that application. You are positive you could not do the same thing with the Home edition?

Bing89 said:

Yes, it did fix the problem. I was just complaining I had to pay for the upgraded program in order to fix it.

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Your own fault. Had you downloaded the old 422 version that I had linked in post #8, you could have done it free of charge. I wonder why I am posting that stuff.

I was wondering WHY you posted that - Now I know the reason. Thanks, I'll get it. I didn't know it had the ability to manage Dynamic drives. I'll add it to my custom Hiren's Boot Disk, I also keep the latest version too.

Reply

I tried the home version first, it would not let me convert the disk. As downloading from the link, I wanted to be safe, I have gotten a virus before and I think it was from loading software from posts like you gave. The information was very helpful, Thank you.

You guys are really funny. One of you thinks that the program I linked cannot do the job and the other thinks that I link viruses. Where are we.

This Skydrive page is owned by SIW2 who was so kind to make it available to us. We should be grateful.

And if you think you are exposed to downloaded malware, do like I do. Safe Internet Browsing - Windows 7 Help Forums

Who said it was a virus? I just downloaded it and it is clean.

XweAponX said:

Who said it was a virus? I just downloaded it and it is clean.

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Look at post #17.

I wanted to be safe, I have gotten a virus before and I think it was from loading software from posts like you gave.

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