Need help.. hard drive letter

[combatace]

Hi All, I installed a software which delete the drive letter of my hard drive partition. I though installing a new windows might do it but that too did not happen. I have data in this partition which I cannot loose. I can see the data using different software but can't retrieve it. If I can some how assign drive letter to it I will get my data back.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Daniel M]

What version of windows? May try right click computer-->manage-->disk management-->right click assign letter

[combatace]

W7&8. Did that but wasn't successful, even used partition manager software but none work all show error. I can see the drive but can't do anything else.

[159th_Falcon]

Try and get hold of a live CD for a linux OS like UBUNTU for example.

Restart the pc and launch the lived CD (or usb stick) and get into UBUNTU.

 

I used to be able to then acces ANY drive in my pc.

And copy data from it to another place.

 

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/try-ubuntu-before-you-install

Read that to get you started.

 

~S~ and hope its still possible, i tried it couple years back.

 

***EDIT***

I forgot, be patient, VERY patient when booting from CD/USB it can take a LOT longer

then your usual HDD/SSD booting.

Edited September 24, 2012 by 159th_Falcon

[Bodo]

Or use yumi with UBCD loaded?

[EtherealN]

Hi All, I installed a software which delete the drive letter of my hard drive partition.

 

What did you install?

 

If it removed a "drive letter", what it might have done is to kill the file allocation tables. In which case you need a forensics expert, and to pray to your preferred deity that your subsequent installs of Windows didn't overwrite the relevant HDD sectors.

 

Need any and all information you can give on the situation to judge this.

[159th_Falcon]

Software like Restorer2000 or the newer Restorer Ultimate may be able to recover data if all else fails.

 

Unfortunately its now hard to find 2000 full version and ultimate requires payment.

[EtherealN]

What worries me is the talk about installing new windows etcetera. This can easily have destroyed even the bit-data, depending on what exactly happened and where the data was.

[DEChengst]

I agree with Falcon. I always use a Linux live CD for recovery. I prefer to use Knoppix:

 

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

 

Boot the CD and open a terminal window. Now you first want to look at the partition table. In my example I assume you have a newish PC.

 

$ sudo su -

# dmesg | grep sd

 

You should at least see a device named sda. If you have additional disks you'll also see sdb, sdc etc.

 

Now look at the partition table:

 

# fdisk /dev/sda

Use p to print the partition table and q to quit.

 

Assuming partition table looks fine now mount the right filesystem. If the filesystem you want to recover is the second filesystem:

 

# mkdir /lostdata

# mount -o ro /dev/sda2 /lostdata

 

You now need a place to save your stuff. I assume a USB drive showing up as sdb and having only one partition.

 

# mkdir /backup

# mount /dev/sdb1 /backup

# cd /lostdata

# cp -pR * /backup

 

If only the partition information is gone you could be gutsy and just recreate it using Linux fdisk. Before doing that myself I would make u bit copy of the entire disk using dd. Be careful though, you can easily screw up your entire system here.

 

BTW. You say all partition software you tried comes back with an error. Please tell us what error you get.

Edited September 24, 2012 by DEChengst

[combatace]

I says the data did not match so drive letter cannot be changed. One says error refresh your drive options.

Trying Ubuntu now, I remember doing it years back forgot about this option. Will let you guys know what happens next.

[combatace]

Linux did the job, retrieved my data, had to delete and re create the drive but finally done.