This bullshit windows OS deleted my games partition.

[borgqueenx]

booted windows today, wanted to start playing a game. i suddenly see all the icons on my game shortcuts on desktop missing. I check with computer....it deleted the games partition.
Documents and windows/boot partition still there, but meh it just went ahead and killed my games partition.

I decided to check with windows partition manager, and apparantly i suddenly have alot of free space suddenly! guess how much...desame size as my games partition was.
tried 2 softwares who can recover partitions without luck. data recovery also isnt a working solution proofed in the past.

So yay! lets redownload my favorite game again. 13 hours remaining, there goes my ability to play today. not to mention the other games wich saved the savegames locally in the game directory.

I hate windows, i wish i had the money for a mac.

[The_Doctor]

Spontaneously destroying partitions is serious. Without knowing the specifics of your system, I can only advise one thing, especially if you see ANY data corruption on a large hard disk.

If you have any hard disk bigger than 137 GB (or 128 GB, depends on exactly how the size counts are specified, decimal or binary), Google for information about 48 bit LBA addressing. If you run WXP you need SP2, AND you need to be sure some registry setting exists. This may not be your problem, but it is so serious, far more so than almost any virus or trojan you'll ever encounter. Anyone who does not know about this, and who runs WXP or earlier and uses big hard disks needs to know this stuff. Worry about the other things when you're sure THIS isn't the problem.

Edit: For all I know this may still apply to later OS's. Odds are that Windows 7 has safe defaults, but best not leave it to chance.

[borgqueenx]

i run windows 7 64bit with a 1tb HDD.

[The_Doctor]

i run windows 7 64bit with a 1tb HDD.

Then you need to Google for:
"Windows 7" OR Win7 48 bit lba

Don't move on to any other problem until you are sure this one isn't it. Make sure you understand what it means when data is written at high speed into sectors that aren't where your OS thinks they are. A clue: There is a movie where some guy shoots the hell out of a pile of melons, scattering them into messy oblivion very very quickly.

[absolom7691]

I hate windows, i wish i had the money for a mac.

This is not going to solve your problem if this is a hardware issue. Check your syslog to look for any faults. Who is the HDD manufacturer? I know for a brief time that Seagate had some issues with the HDD controllers on their 1TB and especially their 1.5TB HDDs.

[buffo]

Losing an entire partition doesn't sound like an OS issue. That sounds like a hardware fault or a particularly malicious virus. Since you're running Windows 7, I kinda doubt the virus hypothesis, if only because Windows Defender is actually halfway decent these days.

Agree with those above: verify your hardware before you re-install, or you might lose it all again.

Adam

[borgqueenx]

any easy stuff to install to check for errors?
thanks for the help.

ive never seen data corruption though on this hard drive.

[absolom7691]

Check the event viewer, not syslog derp (I have been working with Linux too much). Th event viewer has about 8 tons of worthless info but it also logs hardware faults. It could be that this has been an issue for a while and Windows has been correcting it until things got too bad. You can sort by date so if you know about when it happened, you can pin point where to start. Start> type "event viewer" and poke around in there. The next step would be to run a check on the HDD. I would look to see if Acronis has any free HDD utilities for checking the integrity of your drive.

[dnar]

Did this cooincide with dropping your projector?

[borgqueenx]

Did this cooincide with dropping your projector?

oh god you guys never going to forget that we should gravedig that topic out for the lulz.