Deleting a primary partition made some extended partitions dissappear?

[c_k]

Hi everyone!

My basic question is how, if at all, are volumes within an extended partition tied to primary partitions?

I'm asking because of what happened yesterday: I was replacing my old IDE drive with a new one. Before I took it out, I deleted a small primary partition with Computer Mgmt. to merge it with a second one to install XP on the merged partitions, then all except my boot volume in my extended partition dissappeared. I backed most of the volumes before doing this, but not every one due to space limits.

I haven't touched the drive except running Partition Mgr. from my boot volume. PM recognized the primary partition I deleted. If I find my other partition software, I will try them as well. Has anyone lost extended volumes like this, and if you did, what did you do to recover them?

I was about to undelete the primary partition, but thought I'd check with the wise folks at Tom's Hardware! My guess is the missing volume information is linked to the primary partition I deleted? I honestly don't know, so I look forward to your suggestions and related experiences!

-Ck

 

[damian86]

it probably recongised the sector you had,but if you formatted the partition the volume is gone.another way,if you want to have acces to your old stuff remaining on that disk,i will suggest you to plug that hd as a slave and there you will see what is gone and what is still on it.and copy to your system the stuff you could not make backup.
such a long post!!!

 

[c_k]

Good advice Damian!

Fortunately, I didn't touch the drive after the partitions dissappeared. I just ran Partition Manager from my Windows volume, which showed me the primary partition I deleted ... I'm thinking restoring this partition may help recover the missing volumes in my extended partition, I just want to be sure!

My second drive is now my boot drive, so I'm following your advice and running Partition Manager from it. I'll post what I get!