Cannot Assign Drive Letter To Partition

[SpikedCola]

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate. I connected a 500GB hard drive with some important stuff on it, and about 30 seconds after, I got an 0x8E bluescreen. I analyzed the bluescreen and it turned out to be my razer mouse driver, so it seems unconnected. But after that bluescreen, the partition on the drive has no drive letter, and I cant assign it one.

When I use Paragon Partition Manager, it asks me to restart because the drive is in use, so I do, and it completes successfully, but when it reboots into windows, the drive still doesnt have a letter.

Using the Windows Disk Management tool is even more useless - when I right-click and say change drive letter, it says "The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management console view is not up-to-date. Refresh the view by using the refresh task. If the problem persists close the Disk Management console, then restart Disk Management or the computer." Ive tried refreshing, re-opening, and restarting, to no avail.

What can I do to get at my data again?

 

[oldskool]

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate. I connected a 500GB hard drive with some important stuff on it, and about 30 seconds after, I got an 0x8E bluescreen. I analyzed the bluescreen and it turned out to be my razer mouse driver, so it seems unconnected. But after that bluescreen, the partition on the drive has no drive letter, and I cant assign it one.

When I use Paragon Partition Manager, it asks me to restart because the drive is in use, so I do, and it completes successfully, but when it reboots into windows, the drive still doesnt have a letter.

Using the Windows Disk Management tool is even more useless - when I right-click and say change drive letter, it says "The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management console view is not up-to-date. Refresh the view by using the refresh task. If the problem persists close the Disk Management console, then restart Disk Management or the computer." Ive tried refreshing, re-opening, and restarting, to no avail.

What can I do to get at my data again?

I think you can try going in to Disk Management and making it Active.

 

[SpikedCola]

I used the Disk Management tool to make it active, but neither it nor Paragon Partition Manager will let me assign a drive letter still.

 

[KSoD]

Run check disk on it.

 

[SpikedCola]

How? The drive doesnt have a letter, so I cant chkdsk the drive letter.

 

[carnageX]

Boot off of a boot disc and run a check disk on it that way.

 

[KSoD]

Boot off of a boot disc and run a check disk on it that way.

Exactly. Not everything has to be done from within Windows nor can it always be done within Windows. There are hard drive tools from both Seagate and Western Digital that you can use without being in Windows to test the drive as well.

 

[SpikedCola]

But when I want to assign the drive a letter in windows... I assumed that part had to be done in windows Ill fire up a copy of MaxBlast, since its a Maxtor drive.

 

[KSoD]

Yes i understand that part. But if the drive is bad, then nothing you do in Windows will work. So test the drive first. Then work out the drive letter assignment.

 

[carnageX]

Assigning a letter to the drive does have to be done in Windows, but not everything has to be done in WIndows.