My laptop has Vista Home Premium and came with a 100GB HDD partitioned to two
drives. The drives were to be reassigned new letters, but accidentally only
one partition was assigned a letter. The other drives letter was cleared but
a new letter not assigned. Now "Computer" only sees the drive to which the
letter was assigned.

I cannot use restore as there have been a number of updates before this was
discovered and a restore point prior to this event isn't available.

Any suggestions please?

Use the Disk Management console, which you will find under Control
Panel-Administrative Tools-Computer Management.

This will show your drives as the physical devices they are, you should see
the partitions in the graphical representation of the disk. your disk will
probably be divided into three sections, two large partitions and the small
amount of unallocated space at the end of the drive.

What's wrong could be one of two things, either the 'missing' partition has
been formatted correctly and has simply lost its drive letter, or it hasn't
been formatted at all. If the former is true, both large partitions will
have blue bars above them and say NTFS in the box, if this is the case,
simply right-click on the missing partition and click "Change Drive Letter"
or "Assign Drive Letter" (I can't remember exactly how it appears).

If the latter is true, then the missing partition will probably show up with
a black bar and 'RAW' in the box. In this case you need to format the
partition, you will then be able to assign a drive letter. To format, right
click and select format, then go through the options, defaults should be
fine, make sure NTFS is selected. Assign the drive letter as above.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The step above will destroy any data that was on that
partition, if you had previously used the partition to store data and it has
since stopped working and is showing up as 'RAW' then that would indicated
disk corruption, you should seek the advice of a specialist or use a recovery
tool such as Partition Doctor to proceed.

Hope this helps.
Seb.


"Bazzer" wrote:

My laptop has Vista Home Premium and came with a 100GB HDD partitioned to two
drives. The drives were to be reassigned new letters, but accidentally only
one partition was assigned a letter. The other drives letter was cleared but
a new letter not assigned. Now "Computer" only sees the drive to which the
letter was assigned.

I cannot use restore as there have been a number of updates before this was
discovered and a restore point prior to this event isn't available.

Any suggestions please?

Is this second partition a Recovery Partition set up by the computer
manufacturer to enable you to recover your computer to a factory shipped
condition? If so, then you should leave it alone unless you made Recovery DVDs.

--
I Bleed Blue and Gold
GO BEARS!


"Bazzer" wrote in message
...
My laptop has Vista Home Premium and came with a 100GB HDD partitioned to two
drives. The drives were to be reassigned new letters, but accidentally only
one partition was assigned a letter. The other drives letter was cleared but
a new letter not assigned. Now "Computer" only sees the drive to which the
letter was assigned.

I cannot use restore as there have been a number of updates before this was
discovered and a restore point prior to this event isn't available.

Any suggestions please?

Thanks for the replies.

I checked have now Disk Management and the drive appears as (D, which is
what I wanted it to be, (originally it was E), and it has a healthy blue line
above it. - The C: drive has the boot, install & set up files.

Having seen the drive in Disk Management, I have now tried to save a file to
the D drive, (which incidentally is completely empty) and an error message
appears in the "Save As" dialogue box of "No items match your search".

It's as if the drive can be seen but is not being recognised.

Any further thoughts would be appreciated.


"Cal Bear '66" wrote:

Is this second partition a Recovery Partition set up by the computer
manufacturer to enable you to recover your computer to a factory shipped
condition? If so, then you should leave it alone unless you made Recovery DVDs.

--
I Bleed Blue and Gold
GO BEARS!


"Bazzer" wrote in message
...
My laptop has Vista Home Premium and came with a 100GB HDD partitioned to two
drives. The drives were to be reassigned new letters, but accidentally only
one partition was assigned a letter. The other drives letter was cleared but
a new letter not assigned. Now "Computer" only sees the drive to which the
letter was assigned.

I cannot use restore as there have been a number of updates before this was
discovered and a restore point prior to this event isn't available.

Any suggestions please?

How big is the drive? (If it is around 10 GB or so, it is most likely a
Recovery Partition. Does your computer's documentation say anything about
Recovery or making Recovery DVDs?)

How is the disk formatted (NTFS, FAT, FAT 32, etc.)? If the disk is 10 GB
and is truly empty (due to it's formatting, the files may just not be visible),
you could just reformat it.

Is the disk labeled?


I Bleed Blue and Gold
GO BEARS!


"Bazzer" wrote in message
...

Thanks for the replies.

I checked have now Disk Management and the drive appears as (D, which is
what I wanted it to be, (originally it was E), and it has a healthy blue line
above it. - The C: drive has the boot, install & set up files.

Having seen the drive in Disk Management, I have now tried to save a file to
the D drive, (which incidentally is completely empty) and an error message
appears in the "Save As" dialogue box of "No items match your search".

It's as if the drive can be seen but is not being recognised.

Any further thoughts would be appreciated.


"Cal Bear '66" wrote:

Is this second partition a Recovery Partition set up by the computer
manufacturer to enable you to recover your computer to a factory shipped
condition? If so, then you should leave it alone unless you made Recovery
DVDs.

--
I Bleed Blue and Gold
GO BEARS!


"Bazzer" wrote in message
...
My laptop has Vista Home Premium and came with a 100GB HDD partitioned to
two
drives. The drives were to be reassigned new letters, but accidentally only
one partition was assigned a letter. The other drives letter was cleared
but
a new letter not assigned. Now "Computer" only sees the drive to which the
letter was assigned.

I cannot use restore as there have been a number of updates before this was
discovered and a restore point prior to this event isn't available.

Any suggestions please?

Hi

The partition is 54.43 Gb and I had planned on using it for personal
documents, although none are on their yet due to problems with my old laptop.
With the C: drive being used for programs.

The file system for both C: & D: are shown as NFTS. C: (55.89Gb) is shown
as " Healthy (System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary
Partition)". D: is shown as Healthy (Primary Partition)". A smaller 1.46Gb
partition also appears shown as "Healthy (EISA Configuration)" but this
doesn't have a volume allocated

I have just done a quick format to see if this makes any difference, but
nothing. The partition still doesn't appear in "Computer" and doesn't appear
in the list of places to save if I want to save a document.



"Bazzer" wrote:

My laptop has Vista Home Premium and came with a 100GB HDD partitioned to two
drives. The drives were to be reassigned new letters, but accidentally only
one partition was assigned a letter. The other drives letter was cleared but
a new letter not assigned. Now "Computer" only sees the drive to which the
letter was assigned.

I cannot use restore as there have been a number of updates before this was
discovered and a restore point prior to this event isn't available.

Any suggestions please?

Damn, I'm stumped.

Perhaps deleting the partition, rebooting, then recreating the partition,
formatting and assigning a drive letter might work.


I Bleed Blue and Gold
GO BEARS!


"Bazzer" wrote in message
...
Hi

The partition is 54.43 Gb and I had planned on using it for personal
documents, although none are on their yet due to problems with my old laptop.
With the C: drive being used for programs.

The file system for both C: & D: are shown as NFTS. C: (55.89Gb) is shown
as " Healthy (System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary
Partition)". D: is shown as Healthy (Primary Partition)". A smaller 1.46Gb
partition also appears shown as "Healthy (EISA Configuration)" but this
doesn't have a volume allocated

I have just done a quick format to see if this makes any difference, but
nothing. The partition still doesn't appear in "Computer" and doesn't appear
in the list of places to save if I want to save a document.



"Bazzer" wrote:

My laptop has Vista Home Premium and came with a 100GB HDD partitioned to two
drives. The drives were to be reassigned new letters, but accidentally only
one partition was assigned a letter. The other drives letter was cleared but
a new letter not assigned. Now "Computer" only sees the drive to which the
letter was assigned.

I cannot use restore as there have been a number of updates before this was
discovered and a restore point prior to this event isn't available.

Any suggestions please?

Hi, Bazzer.

It might help us guess if you tell us the make and model of your computer.

But what you describe is fairly typical of new Vista computers. Using Disk
Management, you should be able to assign a letter and format that second
partition; it looks like you've already done it (Drive D:, NTFS). What you
describe is just what I would expect. It should now show the full 50+ GB
"Free Space". And it should show up in "Computer".

That "Healthy (EISA Configuration)" volume is the factory-installed backup
or recovery information that you will need if you ever want to restore the
computer to factory configuration. Don't touch this volume unless you are
ready to abandon the original installation and start clean.

I'm not sure why Drive D: is not showing up in Computer, unless you have
somehow hidden it. We used to hide drives with TweakUI; I'm not sure if
there are similar utilities available for Vista. Do you have any conflicts
with a CD\DVD or thumb drive or other device that may be trying to use the
letter D? I like to assign letters like V: or R: to DVD and removable
drives, reserving the first several letters of the alphabet for hard drive
volumes. And use DM to semi-permanently assign the letters, so that they
don't change each time I plug in or remove a thumb drive. The computer
doesn't care; only we humans might get confused.

Try this: In addition to the "drive" letters, we can also assign volume
names or labels. In Disk Management, right-click on that second partition
in the graphical view, then click Properties. In the unlabeled box at the
top of the General tab, type in a name for this volume. Don't call it
something like "D"; that will just invite confusion. Call it "Mystery" or
something else that you will instantly recognize. Then see if that name
shows up in Computer. (It's a good idea to assign names to all volumes;
these are written onto the disk and don't jump around as the drive letters
sometimes do.)

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail beta in Vista Ultimate x64)

"Bazzer" wrote in message
...
Hi

The partition is 54.43 Gb and I had planned on using it for personal
documents, although none are on their yet due to problems with my old
laptop.
With the C: drive being used for programs.

The file system for both C: & D: are shown as NFTS. C: (55.89Gb) is shown
as " Healthy (System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary
Partition)". D: is shown as Healthy (Primary Partition)". A smaller 1.46Gb
partition also appears shown as "Healthy (EISA Configuration)" but this
doesn't have a volume allocated

I have just done a quick format to see if this makes any difference, but
nothing. The partition still doesn't appear in "Computer" and doesn't
appear
in the list of places to save if I want to save a document.



"Bazzer" wrote:

My laptop has Vista Home Premium and came with a 100GB HDD partitioned to
two
drives. The drives were to be reassigned new letters, but accidentally
only
one partition was assigned a letter. The other drives letter was cleared
but
a new letter not assigned. Now "Computer" only sees the drive to which
the
letter was assigned.

I cannot use restore as there have been a number of updates before this
was
discovered and a restore point prior to this event isn't available.

Any suggestions please?