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Question

Drv Letter Visible in Explorer but no size or contents

by Sep 22, 2014 8:44AM PDT

My windows 8 partition is inaccesable. Win 8 won't boot, even after attempted repair and running chkdsk.

This all happened after an automatic update.

I booted to another drive. Windows explorer shows the bad partition letter but no size or contents. Other partitions on the same drive are ok.

I also can see the bad drive contents from a cmd prompt.

What's the deal?.

Discussion is locked

4 Posts
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Answer
huh?
by Sep 23, 2014 11:23AM PDT
"I also can see the bad drive contents from a cmd prompt."

Are you saying you see the contents of the windows 8 partition? Do you know the update number or the date it was issued (not the date necessarily you ran the update).
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Re: Only Partition Letter visible
by rlb2252 Sep 24, 2014 12:24AM PDT

Yes, I can see the contents of the Win8 partition (files, directories)--but only from a command prompt.

Other partitions on the same drive are visible from explorer and function normally. Only my Win8 partition is misbehaving. It shows the volume name. But no size, free space or contents.

Have no idea what update this Win update it was

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Windows Explorer may do that.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Sep 24, 2014 12:30AM PDT

Why is the stuff of prior discussions. Most folk explode as we dive into forensics so if you can see the files you want to save at the command prompt, copy them out now.

Once it's all safe, restore that drive from backup or wipe it and put it back into operation the way you know how.

Yes, I hear you screaming. PCs are still from an era where we get to be computer scientists.
Bob

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Re: invisible
by Kees_B Forum moderator Sep 24, 2014 12:33AM PDT

Not clear from your story: was it a Windows 8 update that apparently damaged the Windows 8 partition, or was it an update to the Windows on your other drive that caused it?

If repair doesn't work, the next step is a clean install. Shouldn't be a problem, even if you don't have a recent backup, since you can use the command prompt (and maybe even a Linux disk, apparently you didn't try that yet) to copy your data out.

Kees

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