Hi. At first, I'm not an English native speaker, so Im sorry If I commit any English mistakes. Right, My 500gb Hd is missing one big partition, and It is only showing 75gb:

1) Its not in the disk management of windows, as some tutorials suggest you as a way to fix the problem;
2) I've formatted it hoping I would find something in the advanced installation of windows, but nothing found there, only the 75gb partition...
3) Linux is not showing partition either;
4) I've installed MiniTools partition software and I perfomed a full scan of the disk. There is a printscreen attached bellow

I wonder, is the disk corrupted? Can it be fixed?
Thanks guys

Need a bit more detail to be sure what's going on. First off, is this the same drive your OS is running on? (I assume not). Also, how are you connecting the drive to the computer? (direct SATA, USB adapter, etc). What size does the drive show in disk management within admin tools?

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Formatting was a serious mistake. If you now recover your data, it will not be because you formatted your drive, it will be in spite of formatting it.

I'm not familiar with MiniTool, but if you can show me the Partitions window of DMDE, I could try to help you.

http://dmde.com/

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Agree totally.

I have no idea where people get the idea from that formatting a drive with data on to retrieve said data is a good idea, it defies logic

We see this many times on hard drives, also on SD cards and USB flash drives. And worse still, often it's a full format they've run on those so the data is gone for good

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No, it's not the same drive, Os is running on the drive left. Drive is connected through direct SATA. Disk management show the exact size shown in Minitools.


Guys, don't get me wrong please, but I'm not stupid. I've done that several times, I mean, a child would do the same: 2 partitions created, one you keep your OS running and the other one (basically the bigger one) you leave for personal data. I've installed Windows in Partition 1 thousands and thousands of times, always keeping partition 2 intact. So I don't know if you really got my point, but there was no full format in the disk, only windows was reinstalled in partition 1. If I had formatted the entire disk, where is 400gb of the hd gone? Plus, I don't care about the data, the HD is more important, all important data I have is in my external hard drive at home and I also have a backup of all important files in the cloud.

I'm begining to think a virus corrupted my HD as we had several invasions here in our network because of a lousy modem dlink DSL2640b that had a huge security breach in its firmware. Either is that or my HD is really in the end of its life. Anyhow, thanks you all for your help...

and... ?
you were able to restore the original capacity by "formating" the drive/partition ?
i don't think so !

if you did it thousands and thousands of times, i have to assume that you're a computer technician, so if you really a computer technician, you probably should know, that formating a drive is not going to make the drive/partition bigger than it is,
and also is gonna delete the data.
so what is the purpose behind formating the drive/partition ?

The screenshot is a little confusing. If there are two partitions (100MB reserved + 74GB OS), and if these have been formatted, then why does the Preview bar say "unallocated"?

The capacity of 74.53GiB is consistent with an 80GB physical drive. Do you have any other HDDs in your machine?

If you examine this drive with CrystalDiskInfo or HDDScan, does it report the existence of a HPA? What model number does it report?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks for answering fzabkar, It looks like Jermy got it all wrong, but you seemed to have got the point of what is really important here. I also realized the unallocated bar you mentioned, its like I've never had 2 partitions...there is only one Hd with 500 Gb of capacity installed through sata, minus 80G used in partition 1, which means I have a second partition of aprox. 420gb missing...WEIRD...It has never happen to me before...I read some articles about missing parts of the hard drive were the result of bad clusters, which means the Hd is close to be dead. It might be that...thats the only explanation...
As soon as I can, I will scan it with HDDScan and share the results here. Thanks...

Look for an HPA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_protected_area

A screenshot of sector 0 with DMDE or some other disc editor would be helpful.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Ok, now there is something you don't see/hear everyday...the problem was in my mainboard sata input. Can you believe it? Switching to a different Sata, bingo, there it was everything as it was before! Well, I have 4 sata slots so I'm not worried about missing one sata, but I'm confused: mysteriously and somehow it partially made part of my hard drive to disappear. Again, weird...Hopefully this failure wont spread out throughout my mainboard. Tomorrow I will take the board off and check any signs of moisture as we have a very humid and damp weather here. Thanks a million for all help.

[Resolved]