How Do I Determine Which Drive My Partitions Are On?

[Asparagus]

I've got an Acer laptop with 2 HDD - one optical, the other SSD. I divided one of the drives into 2 partitions some time ago, but I can't remember which drive I did that to. I'm now having problems booting and have determined that one of my partitions is corrupted (I'm assuming that the HDD is starting to fail).

I can't access the contents of the partition, can't repair it with Windows 7 install disc, can't look at the partitions in Windows, etc. How can I determine which HDD contains my corrupted partition? Ideas?

 

[Essence_of_War]

Burn a linux-live cd, or even a gparted-live cd.

Boot from the live-cd, then you should be able to figure which partitions are on which devices, and poll their SMART data to see if they're failing.

 

[Caveman]

Interesting question... I had a similar situation with one of my computers recently and wondered the SAME THING!!!

Thanks EOW... anyone else have a different approach? Looking to get edjamacated...

 

[OlyAR15]

what is an optical HDD? Is that the same as an optical drive? If so, those can't be partitioned, which means the ssd would be the culprit.

In any case, disk management will show you how the drives are partitioned.

 

[Asparagus]

Is there a way to tell an SSD failure from an HDD failure from clues in the error message. I'm assuming if it tells me on checkdisk that if there are "sectors" to repair, then it must be the HDD, yes? Because an SSD doesn't have "sectors", yes?

 

[Elixer]

Is there a way to tell an SSD failure from an HDD failure from clues in the error message. I'm assuming if it tells me on checkdisk that if there are "sectors" to repair, then it must be the HDD, yes? Because an SSD doesn't have "sectors", yes?

As was already mentioned, Gparted will show you exactly what partitions you have.
If you want to recover, then, in your case, the only option is to clone everything to another HD/SSD, and then attempt a repair of the partition in question with something like testdisk.

Yes, the HD & SSD both have sectors.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Interesting question... I had a similar situation with one of my computers recently and wondered the SAME THING!!!

Thanks EOW... anyone else have a different approach? Looking to get edjamacated...

Virtually any hard drive diagnostic tool will retrieve and display the drive model and serial number. Something like CrystalDiskInfo should show both, along with the partition letter.

 

[Asparagus]

BOTH DRIVES (HDD and SSD) appear hosed! Smells like a virus but who knows...

1) HDD is original WD 500GB with no partitions. I cannot boot into Win 7 at all but I can see the files using an Apricorn "Drivewire" adapter that lets me see the contents of the drive like a USB drive. This drive was simply used for my kids - gaming, etc...

2) SSD is a 240GB Crucial 500 additional drive I added a little over a year ago and was used as my primary boot into Win 7. It was divided up into 2 partitions for Win 7 and Files. Since the disk would boot into Win 7 but showed the "files" partition as inaccessible, I'm assuming the files partition is where the original 4 corrupted file segments resided. Now, I can't even boot into Win 7 on the SSD. I tried seeing the files on the Apricorn Drivewire device (using another Laptop) and the report back was "please format this drive to use it"...

I tried various utilities like CrystalDisk, gparted, etc. All acted like they would install but then there was no icon to run, etc... It's like the program wasn't there... Then I tried HDDEncore (or some similar util) and it was able to read both drives and said only the SDD had issues... Weird!

The Linux solution is a little beyond my abilities and I figured it wouldn't yield anything new... If a windows util couldn't see the drive detail, I assumed the Linnux util wouldn't either...

It looks like I'm in for 2 more brand new drives... After reading the "facts" above, does anyone have any clues as to what may have happened? I'm wondering about a few scenarios that could have taken both drives out at nearly the same time:

a) Virus - seems most plausible except that this appeared more like a hardware failure and when I scanned the SSD with BIT Defender, it said all was fine.

b) Overheating, etc event caused both drives to fail... Seems highly unlikely but maybe one failure led to another? Perhaps the Power Supply circuitry that feeds the drives is dying? That would mean any more drives I put in there are at risk... Any ideas here?


Just opening up for random comments based on my descriptions above. Does anyone have any thoughts/ideas on what may have happened? The problem definitely got worse and worse on the SSD until now it won't even get into Windows for the chkdsk... It just spins and spins on the "STARTNG WINDOWS" screen...

What is the typical failure mode for an SSD? I always assumed the Crucial drives were among the most reliable...

Thoughts???

 

[Essence_of_War]

BOTH DRIVES (HDD and SSD) appear hosed! Smells like a virus but who knows...

...

Thoughts???

https://xkcd.com/1180/

It sounds like you've removed the drives and used a sata-to-usb adapter to mount them from a different computer?

The reason I suggested the bootable linux method on the original computer (either a live gparted or a live distro like ubuntu) is that by booting a live environment you are able to mount the devices independent of OS, but you could also do things like poll SMART data which you're almost certainly not able to get over USB.

 

[corkyg]

There is a very simple way to see partitions as they relate to a drive using Windows. In Win 7, go to Administrative Tools/Computer Management. Then click on Disk Management and you will see the partitions as they are aligned to a particular drive. This also where you can assign or change Drive Letters. Looks like this:

Youcan see that Drive 0 has two partitions lettered as drives.

 

[Elixer]

BOTH DRIVES (HDD and SSD) appear hosed! Smells like a virus but who knows...
...

I tried various utilities like CrystalDisk, gparted, etc. All acted like they would install but then there was no icon to run, etc... It's like the program wasn't there... Then I tried HDDEncore (or some similar util) and it was able to read both drives and said only the SDD had issues... Weird!

Huh, gparted is booted off a CD/DVD/flash drive, no idea what you did, but, sounds like you are confusing things.

While it could be a virus, it could also be many other things.
Hard to narrow down without proper troubleshooting of all components.

The SSD should still be OK, and if you moved it to another machine, and the first laptop has TCG enabled, that would be why you don't see anything on the other machine.

 

[KingFatty]

Why not try disconnecting one drive, and booting with the remaining one? Then, switch places and try again?

 

[jackd1839]

If you want to see the corrupted partition view disk management. It will show you the exact location and then if possible take backup of your Hard drive as there a could be chance of data loss.