I am so lost right now...

[KungFuMaster]

So, I just restarted my laptop to finish an iTunes software update and BANG! The D: partition of my hard drive is GONE, no icon, no nothing and the shortcut on my desktop has a question mark by it. I've never even heard of something like this, can anybody help me with this?

I'm really hoping that I'm not totally boned here, I had over 80 gigs of music in that partition...

 

[Specter_]

Get Knoppix, boot it and see if it finds the partition.
If not you may have to run debian on it, always worked for me.

 

[KungFuMaster]

Aren't those for Linux, though?

 

[Specter_]

Yeah, it's Linux. But Knoppix gives you a boot-CD and Debian... well, you need to plug the HDD into a machine running Debian

 

[KungFuMaster]

But it works with Windows?

 

[Specter_]

It doesn't need Windows, that's the beauty of it. You download Knoppix, burn it on a CD, boot it and it works. It doesn't touch your HDD unless you tell it to. In the best case you can access the lost partition and copy the content to another HDD. Then you load Windows again, format the partition and your back in business.

 

[KungFuMaster]

Holy shit! I knew there was a reason I kept that old hard drive. I'll give it a shot.

 

[mooncalf]

I've had hard drives disappear on me before, sometimes the solution is as simple as shutting down, unplugging/replugging the cables and restarting a few times.