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1namylnFlag for United States of America

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Hard drive no longer accessible from within Windows 7

Gateway desktop running Windows 7 64bit.  1 1TB hard drive and 1 240GB SSD installed.  Problem is the 1TB drive can no longer be seen from within "Computer".  If I go to disk management I can see the drive but it doesn't have a drive letter or partition.  The size of the drive is listed though.  If I right click the drive I see "help" and that's it.  No "open", "properties" etc.  

If I boot to a Live Ubuntu USB same thing happens.  If I open "disks" I can see the drive but the partition isn't mounted.  I can mount the drive and view its contents with no problems.  Event viewer reports nothing out of the ordinary.

Seems like for whatever reason Windows 7 isn't mounting the partition.

Not sure if its related but, recently the power supply was replaced.  The first time the system was powered on the 1TB hard drive wasn't reconnected.  Once booted and within Windows when this was noticed the machine was powered off then the drive was reconnected.  Since the power supply replacement is when this issue occurred.

Again from within Ubuntu Live USB the information can be accessed but the partition doesn't mount automatically.  Thanks in advance.
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David Johnson, CD
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I would venture to say that the hard drive is on its last legs. copy off what you can and replace the drive. On power up the drive isn't initializing quick enough .. when you boot the machine what does the bios say about the drive?
Test the disk using it's manufacturer's diagnostic on it. If it shows problems, replace it.
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Bios reports no problems. I will test the disk using Crystal Disk Info.
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"Disks" within Ubuntu states the disk is healthy.
try running HDDRegenerator (not free) - it revived many drives for me : http://www.dposoft.net/hdd.html      

also , you said "recently the power supply was replaced"  can you tell us why?
sometimes, a bad PS causes more problems on mobo, or other devices

also - i use ubcd for running diags -  you find all disk diags on it :
Hardware diagnostic CD    UBCD

go to the download page, scroll down to the mirror section, and  click on a mirror to start the download
Download the UBCD and make the cd   <<==on a WORKING PC, and boot the problem PC from it
Here 2 links, one to the general site, and a direct link to the download

since the downloaded file is an ISO file, eg ubcd527.iso - so you need to use an ISO burning tool
if you don't have that software, install cdburnerXP : http://cdburnerxp.se/

If you want also the Ram tested - run memtest86+ at least 1 full pass,  - you should have NO errors!
 
For disk Diagnostics run the disk diag for your disk brand (eg seagate diag for seagate drive)  from the HDD section -  long or advanced diag !  (runs at least for30 minutes)

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/                        ultimate boot cd
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html             download page

**  you can make a bootable cd - or bootable usb stick
Run the disk manufacturer's diagnostic on it, not the crystal thing whatever it is. Only the manufacturer's diagnostic tells you reliably what state it is in.
Can you take a screen shot of your Windows Disk Management and post it here? Right click on Computer - Manage - Disk Management. There you can see the drive.
Does the partition on the drive show a file system? Is it NTFS, FAT or RAW? You can try to mount it by right click on partition - Assign\Remove Drive Letter. Does it assign a drive letter?

If RAW then you have a partition structure corruption and you need to take care of the data recovery. Such tools as GetDataBack from www.runtime.org help to recover the data from such RAW marked partitions.
When data is recovered delete this RAW partition and create new one.
Looks like the partition got somehow the protected partition ID because it is marked as recovery partition. Are you able to assign a drive letter to it? Is this drive a backup storage for Windows Backup?
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The drive is a storage drive but not using it for Windows Backup.

I'm not sure how I'd assign a drive letter as when I right click the only option I get is "help"

The machine will be back on the bench in a day or so.  I'll try the MFG HD tests then.  Thanks to all thus far!!
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noxcho
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No disk encryption to my knowledge.  The partition is accessible via a Ubuntu Live USB.  The partition needs to be remounted manually but that's not a big deal.  My plan is to test with MFG software and if it passes to move the data, reformat and replace the data.
Can you change partition ID via Ubuntu? The partition ID must be 0x07 for NTFS. Look how you can change it: http://www.partitionwizard.com/help/change-partition-type-id.html
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Waiting for the machine to come back in for repair.  Client needed it back for a bit.  Will repost ASAP.