Missing NTFS Partition??

[AznLemming]

Recently, I got my desktop to work again, but when I booted up a fresh copy of Windows I realized I had two fewer partitions than I should have. So, I decided to go check out Windows' Disk Management Utility and lo and behold, I find that i have Unpartitioned Space. However, I know that I had partitioned all my free space before, so this is a bit weird to me. Also, the size of the missing partitions is almost equal to the size of the free space. I'm assuming that's where the information's supposed to be. My question is: Is there any way to retrieve the data?

Oh also, when I booted up Windows, it said it had to do some consistency check on my hard drives and ended up doing something with my files. I'm not exactly sure what...

 

[montag451]

depending on why the partition is missing:
spinrite6 would help

 

[AznLemming]

OK, thanks. I'll check that app out.
Do you know how this might have happened? How would the consistency checker do something like this? Thanks!

 

[aGreenAgent]

More likely, whatever made the consistency check run is what messed up the partitions (drive index table got messed up or something).

 

[montag451]

It depends on how you partitioned the drives in the first place.

Sometime ago, I did some partitioning on a non-critical system and somewhere along the line using PM8 something went awry.
I ended up repartitioning and formatting to repair the problem after trying out some partition 'fixers' etc.

 

[AznLemming]

Well this came up after I shipped my computer from school back home. They were working properly before, but now they're all messed up... iono... So is there anything else I might be able to try to recover junk?

 

[aGreenAgent]

Any sort of data recovery tool should be able to do it, to at least some degree. Search download.com for data recovery or something. I can't really recommend one, since I haven't really used them.