Vista won't recognise Hard Drive!

MattyP91 · Apr 20, 2009

I just bought a laptop and my 320GB hard drive came pre-partitioned. The 40GB partition set for vista quickly became full, mainly because I now know that my documents was for some reason being saved on the C Drive (vista). I attempted to use Partition magic to resize the partitions and upon loading, the program gave me two error messages and said "would you like these to be fixed?" of course I clicked yes to both of them then the program wouldnt work at all. In fact vista wouldnt recognise the Hard drive altogether. I restarted and following that vista recognised the Vista Partition but not the data partition.

I finally decided to just back up my docs and restore to factory default. After that though to my annoyance Vista still refused to recognise my data partition.

What should I do and is there any program I can use to fix this situation....?

Thanks

echrada · Apr 20, 2009

Go to:

control panel -> Administrative Tools - > Computer Management
in there choose ' storage' => 'disk management'

Your data partition should be there, if necessary you will have to format and make sure that it is an active primary partition.

MattyP91 · Apr 20, 2009

I already tried this and when I select "Make Partition as Active" I get the error message "The specified Partition type is not valid for this operation"

and when I try to resize the partition i get the message "The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management view is not up-to-date. Refresh the view using the refresh task. If the problem persists close the Disk Managment console, then restart Disk Management or restart the computer"

Restarting does nothing....

It recognises that there is a space there but I just can't do anything with it.

rive0108 · Apr 20, 2009

did you format it NTFS/BASIC/SIMPLE and assign a drive letter?

MattyP91 · Apr 20, 2009

When I right click on partition and click format I get the error "An unexpected error has occurred. Check the system error log for more information on the error. Close the disk management console, then restart disk management or restart the computer."

dinesh · Apr 20, 2009

MattyP91 said:
When I right click on partition and click format I get the error "An unexpected error has occurred. Check the system error log for more information on the error. Close the disk management console, then restart disk management or restart the computer."

Ya thats a known problem, try a http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/88236-repair-install-vista.html or probably a http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/117366-clean-install-full-version-vista.html. Make sure to partition the HDD as the time of reinstalling Vista(if you are willing to reinstall).

rive0108 · Apr 20, 2009

MattyP91 said:
When I right click on partition and click format I get the error "An unexpected error has occurred. Check the system error log for more information on the error. Close the disk management console, then restart disk management or restart the computer."

do this then:

burn this to cd, and boot into the disk. DELETE the Data partition you created, and create it again and format to NTFS/SIMPLE/BASIC and assign a drive letter.

Paragon Partitioner (this is an ISO image for a bootable partitioner)

burn with:BURNCDCC

for more info read this on partitioning:http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/163304-dual-boot-using-free-partitioning-software.html

MattyP91 · Apr 20, 2009

So last time I reinstalled, I used the disk that I made when I first booted the computer when I bought it, When I first booted computer Some BenQ utility popped up and I made a recovery disk. So that's the disk I used to re-install. But when I did this the partition was still unreadable...

I've give Paragon Partitioner a go and see how I go....

MattyP91 · Apr 20, 2009

Yay!! :D Paragon sorted it out. Cheers.

How do I change the directory of MyDocs??? so its on the Larger partition and not the vista partition?

Thanks guys

rive0108 · Apr 20, 2009

MattyP91 said:
Yay!! :D Paragon sorted it out. Cheers.

How do I change the directory of MyDocs??? so its on the Larger partition and not the vista partition?

Thanks guys

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/107990-personal-user-shell-folders-move-location.html

I would have personally made the Windows folder the largest and the data folder 100GB or so for this reason:

System restore and shadow copy.

This is what will enable you to restore in the event you have issues. The smaller Windows volume is the less options you will have for restore points, and restoring previous versions of folders that are changed/deleted (shadow copy). You will have a couple days now if you are lucky in which to go back and restore.
I suggest you enable file backup for weekly backups, and image your drive now and every 6-months. If you have hard drive failure, or corruption, you may lose all the data on the hard drive. It is best to use an external hard drive for DATA backup.

Use Vista's complete pc backup utility
or:
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/download.html

Dwarf · Apr 20, 2009

Hi Matt,

Have a look at the following Tutorial: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/107990-personal-user-shell-folders-move-location.html

SIW2 · Apr 20, 2009

Partition Magic is not compatible with Vista's new partitioning rules.

In future, might be a good idea use Disk Management, or the app. rive 0108 posted.

Hope it helps

Vista won't recognise Hard Drive!

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