[thingie2]

Well, I ghosted the drive onto another drive yesterday, however that was only the 40GB part, it didn't seem to find the rest to ghost (I used norton ghost 9.0) the drive has all my stuff on it (it used to only be the 1 partition) it has stuff like, photos, school work/coursework, save games (save games aren't as important) etc, I would like to be able to be talked through how to get the files back if possible, I would prefer to do it with freeware programs, however if there is only programs that you have to buy that will do the job, I might be willing to spend money on it.

Thanks

[spot]

Can you think if a reason why the partition size has changed to 40GB from the initial full capacity disk?

[thingie2]

Well, my theory is, that when I plugged in my old hdd (40GB) it made the motherboard think this hdd was that one (so only 40GB in size) when I removed the old hdd.

[spot]

I'd assumed that the BIOS settings for all the drives are Auto. Can you check that they are and make them all Auto if they're not?

[thingie2]

i'm pretty sure they ar all on auto, I will check now

Edit: yes, it's on auto, and the bios says it's 249GB in size.

[rbscooby]

wow i had helped with something by finding this

[spot]

Take a look at http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk which is free and it's what I'd start out with. It will give you a good idea of what's there, but whether it'll go all the way for you I don't know.

There are other tools we could try afterwards but that's a start. Do be sure you can get your D: drive contents back from that ghost image, you don't want to lose those files as well and it's easy to lose them where you're going.

[thingie2]

What with that program?

[thingie2]

hmm, sorry, it seems like f the words I typed for my last post didn't apper, it was ment to say "what do I do with that program"

[spot]

I'm not sure, I've not used it and I don't have a Microsoft system so I can't get it and see what the menus are like. I'd go to Disk Management and, for the time being, take the drive D: letter off the 250GB drive so there's no way anything can be open on it. Then I'd download the TestDisk program and run it, it ought to tell you what it can see structurally on the 250GB partition table. It might offer to make changes, you need to decide whether what it's offering gets you closer to rebuilding your directories or not. Recovering your files depends on finding those directories and putting them into a state where you can copy the files they contain.

Take it a step at a time, don't rush any decisions, come back when you've seen something you're not sure about, there's several people here who can guess whether you're on the right track. If this doesn't get any closer we can pick on another tool but TestDisk is a reasonable start.