Partition vanished into thin air

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Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
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Drive is an Intel S3500 480GB holding Window Server 2012 R2. Fired it up and got a Windows could not start message. Error code was something on the order of 0x0000e, Device missing (don't remember exactly). Pulled the drive and put it in another box and all the was on it was the System Reserved partition, the rest was unallocated. I'm currently running Intel Diags on it but all looks well. Never seen this before. Anybody have any idea what might have happened? Last time I fired this box up there were no indications of problems so I'm at a loss here. :confused:
 

fractal

Active Member
Jun 7, 2016
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Last time something like that happened to me was malware. I put the partition back and the virus scanner found the culprit.
 

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
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The drive passed Intel Diags with flying colors. So I still have no idea what caused it. It's a server so I doubt it was malware. But not knowing what it was means anything is possible. I replaced the drive and did a fresh install of Windows. Gonna configure a backup schedule this time. o_O
 

jim

New Member
Jul 22, 2016
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The drive passed Intel Diags with flying colors. So I still have no idea what caused it. It's a server so I doubt it was malware. But not knowing what it was means anything is possible. I replaced the drive and did a fresh install of Windows. Gonna configure a backup schedule this time. o_O
Did you try some partition recovery program like testdisk and ddrescue? I once had some luck with them on a dying HDD, and was able to recover pretty much everything. Good luck ;)
 

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
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Nope. No need to recover the partition. Everything on it was backed up. Question now is can I trust this drive again?
 

SINN78

Active Member
Apr 3, 2016
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why not recover the partition and do a virus scan just to rule that out?