Missing section hard disk, the consequences of this can be very different from the inability to enter the operating system to the complete loss of your files. Let's reflect on our further actions to eliminate this problem and think over a strategy for the fight. You turned on the computer, Windows booted and then you find that a logical volume, such as a disk (D :), is missing, in this case, to fix your problem, you can act using all the advantages of a working operating system, install any program for working with hard disk partitions and try to find and restore your deleted partition, this is understandable, by the way, on this topic, we have an article Lost disk (D :). But how will you proceed if your operating system does not load and the drive (C :) with all the files disappeared by all indications, you must admit that the task becomes much more complicated.

I will not bore you with a listing of the reasons for this, but I will go straight to the elimination of the problem, they brought such a computer to work, the main complaint does not load Windows

booting from the Live CD, we found the complete absence of the Disk (C :), we will try to fix this problem, we need the Acronis Disk Director program, or rather its bootable version, this is done in a few minutes, you can read how to do this on our website - Acronis Disk Director boot disk, if you describe this procedure here, our already long article will be even longer.
We insert the bootable media with Acronis into the drive and reboot, how to set the boot from the disk is described in detail on our website.
Choosing our program

The main window of our program and we see the complete absence of the main section

Where Disk C used to be, unallocated space

You can of course spend quick format, and then return the data to R-Studio or any other program for recovering deleted data, but we will do it differently, note in the left corner of the program window there is the Acronis Recovery Expert utility, which includes the functions of recovering hard disk partitions, launch it.

Let's choose quick method search for deleted volumes

Found our deleted partition, it is called E, do not be embarrassed and remember Acronis often confuses drive letters, but you can forgive him, select our deleted partition and click next

The section is restored, select it and click next

Continue and recovery will begin

Our section has been restored and we are congratulated

Our main volume Drive C does not look like unallocated space at all, exit the program and reboot

Now all your data has been restored on the (C :) drive, you can not worry about them, you can get them by booting from any Live CD, this is already good, as for the operating system, it will not boot with us due to damage to the partition table, we have it restore, there are many tools, but I usually use two: Console Windows recovery XP and Operating System Recovery in Windows XP Setup, let's start with the console.
Insert the installation Windows disk XP, reboot, after reboot everything is as with a simple installation, the Windows XP installation program starts and after loading a menu appears, in it you need to select item 2 and press R

Next, the Windows XP setup program will search for already installed copies of Windows XP that need recovery and then the recovery console will load, it will offer to enter the operating system as an administrator

When asked which copy of Windows you must log in, you need to put the number one, if you have one on your computer installed Windows XP, which is most likely
If there was no password, press Enter and go to the operating system, then enter the FIXMBR command, the command will restore the hard disk partition table and overwrite the master boot record, when asked, do you confirm the new MBR record? agree - enter Y
And yet, we enter the FIXBOOT command, the command will overwrite the files necessary for Windows boot XP, we drive exit and reboot and the operating system did not boot, but should. This sometimes happens, you can try again, but we will not, I understand that we are busy for a long time and we will try to restore the operating system in the Windows XP setup program.
Reboot, in the DVD-ROM we have a disc with installation program Windows XP, the usual process of installing the operating system begins, we wait patiently, in the first menu we no longer select the recovery console, but proceed to Windows installation XP and in this window "To try to restore the selected copy press R"

The process of restoring the operating system will begin, the old system files will be replaced with new ones, it will be overwritten boot record, your data will remain intact, from all your installed programs one, two will refuse to work, they will have to be reinstalled.
Well, here we are booted.

Many users create partitions on the hard disk - these are drives C, D and further down the list. Unfortunately, one of the most annoying problems that a user may encounter is that the hard disk partition has disappeared and cannot be found.
There is no denying the usefulness of hard disk partitions. For example, one partition may have an operating system installed, while the other contains a multi-gigabyte library of movies and music. When reinstalling the operating system, the partition with user files may not be affected, which means that files even with new windows will remain with you.

Unfortunately, the problem when a hard disk partition suddenly disappears is quite common, and there are plenty of reasons that can affect the occurrence of this problem.

What to do if a hard disk partition is missing?

The first thing to do is to go to the Disk Management menu and see if it displays a logical partition. If so, the section must be assigned a letter.

To do this, call the menu "Control Panel" and then go to section "Administration".

In the window that opens, double-click on the shortcut "Computer Management".

A new window will appear on the screen, in the left pane of which you will need to open the section "Disk Management".

After a moment, the screen will display the requested information. Look carefully at the disk partitions. If you see your disappeared partition, it will need to set a new drive letter. To do this, click on the section right click mouse and in the highlighted context menu make a choice in favor of the item "Change drive letter or drive path".

In the new window, click on the button "Change".

The system will warn you that the programs installed on this disc may stop working. If you agree to continue, click on the button "Yes".

Tip 2: creating a new section and then merging it

The essence of the problem may be that the files are still in the partition, but Windows does not see it, for example, due to the fact that the file system has been lost. In this case, we will try to use third-party tools that can see the section, "split off" a piece from the section by creating a new one with a file NTFS system and then just combine them.

1. To do this, turn to the help of the program Acronis Disk Director Advanced(download link is available at the end of the article). You will need to download this program to the computer, and then create in it boot disk or a USB flash drive Live-CD.

2. Enter BIOS. As a rule, to do this, at the very early stage of the download, you need to repeatedly press hotkey – F2 or Del.

3. Install bootable USB drive or disk as main boot device... To do this, you need to find the section "First Boot Device» (the name of the section may differ slightly), and then select your USB flash drive or CD-ROM first in the list.

4. Exit BIOS. The computer will start to boot, and the Acronis Disk Director Advanced window will then appear on the screen. The utility will display a list existing sections, among which, most likely, you will see the section that Windows does not see.

5. Using the utility tools, you need to separate a small piece from the partition (several megabytes will suffice) by asking it file system NTFS.

6. When the section is created, merge this section and the problematic section. Save the changes and then reboot the system by entering the BIOS and set to boot from the hard drive. After exiting the BIOS, the system will boot under Windows. Check the status of the disk partition - it should display correctly.

It can be assumed that you will not be able to return the partition, but you can try your luck to restore the files contained in it. In our task, again, the Acronis Disk Director Advanced utility will help us.

1. Follow the steps described in the last tip, from the first point to the fourth.

2. In the Acronis Disk Director Advanced menu, open the section "Partition recovery", then select the disk with which further work will be performed and follow the instructions of the program.

Please note that the procedure for recovering files from a partition can take quite a long time (it all depends on the number of files on the disk). Therefore, be prepared for the fact that the computer will have to work for a long time.

4. After completing the recovery procedure, exit the Live-CD and boot your Windows computer.

We hope that these recommendations, which are quite easy to follow, have helped you solve the problem with displaying the section. In addition, if you have your own experience in solving the problem, share it in the comments.

In today's blog post, we will look at a very interesting question - what to do if a logical partition of your hard drive is missing. Often there is such a situation when a user, after some operations on the computer, suddenly lost a logical partition of the hard disk, for example, the D: \ drive. In such cases, there is no need to panic and take any hasty actions. This can only make your situation worse.

The logical partition of the hard disk is missing.

First you need to go to disk management: My Computer -> Management -> Disk Management, there will most likely be unallocated space. This is our missing D: \ drive.

If you create some kind of unallocated space now new section and format it for the file system, then all your data will most likely be lost and it will be very difficult to recover them. Therefore, it is better to do it differently, we will try to return the missing D: \ drive with all our files.

For this purpose, we need the Acronis Disk Director program. Also included in the package of this program is the Acronis Recovery Expert utility, which includes the functions of recovering hard disk partitions.

And so, launch the Acronis Disk Director program, the main program window will open.

Choosing manual control

Select unallocated space with the mouse and move on

Choosing a fast search method

And here is our missing disk D: \, select it with the mouse and go on.

Recovery in progress

Result of work

Click the "Continue" button.

We accept congratulations

Here, after all this recovery procedure is completed, our missing D: \ disk with all your files appears in the system.

That's all for now! I hope you found something useful and interesting for yourself in this post.

Hello, my dear friend.

Most recently, I reinstalled the operating system on one of the computers.

After reinstallation, one of the partitions on the disk disappeared. That is, there is only one system partition left and that's it. In fact, there are many reasons why this happened. However, in my case, this problem was not critical. Everything recovered very simply with the help of standard tools Windows without installing additional programs.

To do this, I used the system administration tools.

When I went into this tool, I found that the system simply did not give the section any letter! Therefore, it was not displayed in the system.

You can find them in the start menu or in the control panel. However, by default, they are not displayed on the start menu.

Settings forWindows XP:

To do this, you need to right-click on the start menu button and go to properties. Then go to the "Start Menu" tab on the right there will be a customize button, click on it. Then go to the advanced tab and find the administration inscription there and select "Display in the All Programs and Start Menu". Then approx. Administration is now displayed in the start menu.

Settings forWindows 7:

To do this, you need to right-click on the start menu button and go to properties. Then go to the "Start Menu" tab on the right there will be a customize button, click on it. Then find the inscription "Administration" and select "Display in the All Programs and Start Menu". Then approx. Administration is now displayed in the start menu.

The settings are pretty much the same. There is simply no additional button in the seven and it is much faster to get to the desired option.

Then go to Start Menu - Administration - Computer Management. Or go to the properties of "My Computer" and this item will also be there.

Then go to Storage - Disk Management.

Then I found the section that was lost. And just assigned it a drive letter. Right clicked on it. Selected item Change drive letter or drive path. Then I clicked add.

At this step, I selected the drive letter I liked and pressed ok.

Computer users often encounter the fact that partitions of a hard disk, into which it was split during the installation of the operating system or after that, disappear for no reason. There are a lot of reasons why some section of the hard disk has disappeared, seemingly for no reason at all. This can be damage to the device itself, and its overheating, and failures in the operating system, and the impact of viruses, and God knows what else. Some, not understanding the problem, immediately start frantically reinstalling the entire system and partitioning the hard drive again. But this only leads to the fact that, for example, on a logical disk previously saved important information will be deleted. In order not to apply such drastic methods, let's see what can be done in such a situation with the least loss.

The hard disk partition disappeared at system startup: how to restore the boot using the simplest method?

To begin with, a few words about the most unpleasant situation when problems are observed with the system partition.

For example, you turn on the computer, it seems to be starting, but suddenly a message appears on a black screen stating that when loading HDD undefined, or a notification that the installed operating system was not found. Don't panic. It is quite possible that such a situation is only due to the fact that contacts have moved away somewhere. Just check the tightness of the cable and power cables (of course, with the computer turned off).

If everything is in order with this, it is possible that important system components responsible for starting Windows are damaged.

In this case, you need to boot from removable media like LiveCD and first of all call command line(Shift + F10) and scan them (sfc / scannow). As a rule, in most cases after recovery system files the system will be detected without problems. But this is not always the case.

If this does not give an effect, you can try to use the Bootrec.exe command, after entering which the additional attribute "/ FixMBR" is entered first, separated by a space, and then with the repeated input of the main command - "/ FixBoot" (both attributes are entered without quotes). If this does not help, you can completely overwrite the bootloader by adding to main team attribute "RebuildBCD" (again, without quotes). If for some reason this does not give the desired result, use the bootable version of the TestDisk utility, which can be used as a tool for diagnosing and restoring the system partition.

Missing hard drive partition in Windows 10: letter remapping

But, as practice shows, most often the appearance of such situations is associated not with the system, but with the logical partition. Suppose that the hard disk partition that was displayed under the letter D in the system has disappeared. All devices are visible in Explorer, but this partition is not. Sometimes you can come across situations when your friends could make fun of you by setting the hidden attribute for this section (an empty area will be shown in the "Explorer"), which needs to be removed.

It can also be assumed that the logical partition of the hard disk has gone missing for another reason, and in this moment the system simply does not see it under the required letter occupied by another device.

To display it, you need to call the disk management section (diskmgmt.msc), select the path or letter change item on the section via RMB, and then assign it the desired letter from the list.

Note: keep in mind that if you have only two partitions on your disk, use letters A, B, E, F, etc. is not worth it. It is believed that the first two are reserved for floppy disks, the rest - for floppy drives and USB drives. Select letter D and save changes. If this does not work, assign, for example, the letter Z.

What if an unallocated area appears instead of a logical partition?

The situation looks worse when a hard disk partition disappeared, and an unallocated area appeared instead. This happens very often. In this case, if important user files have not been saved in the logical partition, in the same disk management section via PCM you can choose to create a simple volume, and then assign it a new letter and perform a complete formatting.

Technique for creating a new section and merging with the missing

But what if important information was saved in the disappeared section? Of course, you can try to restore it using a unique R-Studio programs(even after formatting the section), but there is a simpler solution.

In such a situation, it is better to turn to programs like AOMEI Partition Assistant or a similar utility from Acronis and "pinch off" a small piece from the system partition (even a few megabytes will be enough), create a simple volume, format it in NTFS, and after all operations are completed, merge it with the problematic partition.

Recovering MBR and GPT partitions with third-party utilities

Some programs are also designed to recover lost partitions. For example, you can perform similar actions with a PC hard drive in the same Disk Director application, using the built-in Recovery Expert tool, in which, following the wizard's prompts, you need to select a manual recovery mode and set a full search.

The program itself will perform all the necessary actions, and upon their completion, the logical volume with all the information available on it will be brought into a fully functional state.

It is especially worth noting the situation when the hard partition has disappeared. GPT disk... What is this section? Basically, it is a disk or volume larger than 2TB, for which the GPT style is set instead of MBR.

To restore such partitions, the DMDE program is best suited, in which you need to select the hard disk with the missing partition, select it after scanning, press the insert button, and then specify the GPT (GUID) partition in the menu, which will be prompted to do automatically, and upon completion with confirmation of operations, completely reboot the system.

What else could there be?

Finally, it is worth paying attention to the possible presence of various kinds of viruses on the computer. It is recommended to identify them with subsequent neutralization or removal either using portable scanners like KVRT, or using antivirus software with a bootloader, when using which you can boot from removable media before starting the operating system, like Kaspersky Rescue Disk.