hello there... i used Partition magic to merge to drives of 75G each in to one.I followed all the standard procedure .it complete the process with an error saying "press any key to continue" and after reboot i saw the one drive unallocated and empty(this was almost full with music and video) and the other one(almost empty) with the same used/unused space but in somehow unable to acess the data that it contained. I created the unallocated drive but it was empty! can anyone help me pls? How is possible so much data lost without warning? what can i do?

You didn't lose any data, you can still pull the files from your backups. What's that? You don't have backups? OMFG. Rule #1: Always back up any data that is important to you. Rule #2: See rule #1 "How is possible so much data lost without warning?" Very easily. There are several places that can be overwritten (i.e. MBR - master Boot record) that will make all the files on the drive inaccesible. Alright enough preaching. Do not do anything to those drives that may write something to them, lest you want to lose the data forever (if it's not lost already). You will need to find a program that will allow youto read and copy any files that are still recoverable. There's the one at the top-right of this page from runtime.org, but there are others as well. you can Google for other options. But, you will need someplace to copy the files. I douob't you will be able to restore the files in place. Michael J

WHAT ERROR? If you created a drive on the unallocated space, your files are, figuratively speaking, at the bottom of the ocean. You will need mucho effort to get them back, if you even can. There is a check partition command in PartitionMagic. You didn't try to merge with a partition that has an operating system installed, did you? 98% of the population is asleep. The other 2% are staring around in complete amazement, abject terror, or both.

Thanks for the reply but u shouldnt be so strict.i dont think i am the onlyone that has problems with partition magic.the thing is that i cannot back up 90giga of avi and mp3!.where to back up to?i have to have another hard disk which i havent. .i back up and image my other c drive, the partition with all the programs etc. i tried already "on track" but didnt find anything.now i am scanning the drivers with "getbackdata" and then i ll use "easy recover" if it doesnt work.i havent touched these drives so i can restore the data if possible. trying trying trying...hope it works

Good advice from Michael J. Just in case it's what caused the problem, I will mention the fact that XP needs SP1 to handle drives greater than 137GB.

no...the operating system wasnt there.it was in the third partition which i havent touched.

...and my xp have both SP1 and SP2