Partition not showing after installing Windows 7

Hi Guys,

I had a test version of windows 7 installed on my Sata drive which had 3 partitions on it (c:40gb, d:40gb, e:220). This worked fine.

I decided that i liked Windows 7 so i wanted to re-install it on a permanent basis so i went through the installation, formatted C: ONLY and installed windows 7 as a fresh copy. During installation, i noticed that c: & d: showed up correctly but e: was not showing. Instead, there was a 220gb unallocated space. I thoughht i'd ignore this as i have a lot of files on e: and i hoped that when i finished installing Windows 7 on C: then E: would show up correctly.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. I cannot see e: in my computer. When i go to disk management, i can see the 220gb space but no drive letter is assigned to it. Furthermore, when i right-click on the space, i cannot do any task (i.e. assign drive letter) except delete. Everything else is disabled. Also, the disk space being shown is size=218gb, free=218gb.

This looks like Windows 7 has decided to delete my drive without my permission. I have done absolutely nothing to the partition during or after installation yet i can't get it working.
I had quite a bit of work on this partition and i was wondering:

a) whether i can get the partition to work correctly on Win 7 without deleting/formatting?

b) if i have to format the partition, is there a way i can get my data off the partition (if it is still there)?

Regards,

Shuja

Hi dabooj - Welcome to w7forums

Are you dual booting with C: & D:?

I ran across this once and was able to copy my files from the space with a different OS. After copy was finished, I then reformated with Win7. I do hope there is an easier solution to this for you. You might can try a freeware partitioning solution. Maybe this would allow you to assign a drive letter without formating.

Read more here - Best Free Partition Manager

Found the issue causing the problem.
I tried the various solutions that have been mentioned but nothing seemed to work BUT i installed the partition wizard software (http://www.partitionwizard.com/download.html) & when i viewed the disks within the PW, i could see the missing partition and i could explore the files.
Now, for some reason, the partition had been set as a hidden partition (i'm not sure where this setting can be set). Within partition wizard i was able to unhide the partition.
I could then go to windows 7 disk management & was able to assign the drive letter to the partition and the drive is working & my files are still on it.

Thanks for all your help guys.

Regards, Shuja

Partition Wizard Rocks! FTW! Plus it a free program and there is a CD ISO image available too for burning to CD for recovery.

A hidden partition that Windows claims is there, empty, and ready for formatting? That's extremely odd, I'll have to remember that one. I'm glad you got all your data back!