Lost my label on hard drive help please!

Question

A few days ago I mysteriously lost the ability to open several partitions on my second hard drive. The computer can't see the "j" and "l" drives and the "my computer" window shows them as having "no label." I was deleting some files the other day when all of a sudden the computer ran really slow and then out popped an error window saying that the "j" and "l" drives were not formatted and if I wanted to reformat. I checked "no" and ever since, I can't access either partition. I've got norton systemworks 2002 and disabled it and tried virus scanning with the latest norton antivirus2004. No viruses were found. Is there any way to relabel the j and l drives without reformatting and losing the data? Do I have an unknown virus? This has been driving me mad and any help is greatly appreciated!

My system: Dell dimension xpsb100r, win98se, secondary maxtor hd, no problems at all for 4 years until now. :(

DjKwik1042 · Answer

There is one thing I can tell you about this problem. If you delete a partition or a partition gets lost in the dust than usuallly the files are still there but in order to use that partition you would have to format the partition which would erase everything you had there. Ummm....does type of problem doesn't sound to new to me and I think with the right help and some software you could get your stuff back. Keep checking back here to see if anyone else rights back and I'll take a look at some solutions for you.

charlye · Answer

Not sure what happened, but you said you had norton systemworks. You might start by trying to run disk doctor and see what it tells you. You'll know immediately if IT can see the partitions any way. If so, run disk diagnostics on them.

If you do, let us know.

Charlye

gus1 · Answer

Thanks very much for your help and suggestions.  I've run norton disk doctor and it can't find the j or l drive.  Same goes for scan disk.  I have the second maxtor hd partitioned into 5 parts.  I've labeled them max1, max2, max3, and max4 and max5.   'My computer' can see the labels for max1, max2, and max4.  Drive j and l correspond to max3 and max5 labels.  The computer can't see the max3 and max5 labels, it only shows as 'j' and 'l'.   I can't open the j and l drives.  Hope this makes sense.  I'm sure I didn't intentionally delete the partitions.  I've come across Restorer2000 data recovery software at http://www.bitmart.net/data-recovery-software/data-recovery-software.shtml.  Does anyone have any feedback on this software?  I'd like to try to recover what's in the j and l drives.  Or, is it possible to relabel the drives or do something to try to get the computer to 'see' them again?   Also, my computer is still running very slow with only 73% system resources free with no programs open.  Do you think there's spy/adware going on?  Thanks again very much for the help!

gus1 · Answer

Hi, an update to my hd problem.  I've disabled the 2nd maxtor hd by going into the bios and now the computer runs well.  However, I'd still like to try to recover what was lost when the j and l drives went down.  Still would like feedback please on data recovery software if anyone has any experiences with.  Much thanks in advance.

Storage, Drives & Media

Lost my label on hard drive help please!

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