After Consolidate Free space drive is invisible

[razbak]

Used MyDefrag 4.3.1. for the first time last night in the Consolidate Free space mode and now Win7 32 Ultimate cant see it upon boot.

The drive is very full - 550gb of a 640gb WD Blue storage drive.

I then tested by booting through UBCD4win and thankfully all the information can be seen from there.

In Win7 Disk Manager the drive can be seen but indicates it is an empty drive, with 100% available.

Glary Utils says it doesn't exist.

I cant show you the log as it has been overwritten by another type of defrag for boot C. Seems the system doesn't store each defrag record but overwrites the previous one.

I was going to do an Analysis but thought I'd leave it alone till seeking advice here.

What to do guys Scary stuff

[Darlis]

I then tested by booting through UBCD4win and thankfully all the information can be seen from there.

I would suggest that you back up all the data on the drive then (if you haven't already) and then run chkdsk and see if it fixes something.

Glary Utils says it doesn't exist.

Did you run it as administrator?

I cant show you the log as it has been overwritten by another type of defrag for boot C. Seems the system doesn't store each defrag record but overwrites the previous one.

I doubt that the MyDefrag log is helpful here. I also doubt that the problem is because of MyDefrag, see How safe is MyDefrag?

[razbak]

Thx Darlis

What if i simply did another defrag using a script other than Consolidate?
Could that make things worse?

[Kasuha]

If you say your system cannot see the disk, then MyDefrag will probably not see it as well.

[WHRoeder]

What if i simply did another defrag using a script other than Consolidate?
Could that make things worse?

Very much so. The disk is hosed. if you want the data BACK IT UP IMMEDIATELY. anything you do could loose everything.
THEN try chkdsk /F to see if the file system can be fixed.

[razbak]

Hi WHRoeder

Luckily the disk is NOT hosed
As I pointed out in an earlier post, when I boot through UBCD4win thus avoiding the normal boot process I can see all the folders and have opened one to check the content was there. So it is all there...but...when I boot normally through windows the drive is invisible. Not I have to borrow or buy another large drive - this is a 640 WD Blue then I'll do chkdsk /F as you and others have suggested. Thx

[jeroen]

MyDefrag is totally safe and absolutely cannot make a disk invisible like that. It does not even access the partition information. Your problem is definitely caused by something else on your computer. Some softwares are incompatible with defraggers in general, see the second point on Known problems. Are you using software like that?

Could it be a permission problem? Does the userid that you are logged in on have enough permissions to access the disk? Please note that logging in on the administrator userid does NOT necessarily give you enough permissions.

Also, I remember having a similar problem a long time ago. It was caused by scumware, just visiting a website was enough, it installed itself and did all kinds of nasty things, including making disks invisible. I don't remember the solution, something to do with a registry setting. It was Windows 2000, I think, definitely not Windows 7.

[BloodySword]

Tip: If a system is compromised by malware, you should drop everything and overwrite the whole drive including boot sector and MBR zone with zeros, then check the BIOS and reflash it if neccessary. It's the safest solution I know, it will definitely kill ALL malware! I practised this often. Important documents or files can be rescued using a linux life environement. ClamAV can scan any file and determine if the files is clean or not.