Oh I have that sinking feeling on this... I merged two partitions on my 300 Gb hard disk using partition magic 8. Previously I had 4 partitions, all NTFS. Right at the end of the merge I got an error message. Something like 'error task 1418' and that it couldn't finish. Yet it apppeared to have merged the two, because the new graphic diagram showed the two partitions as one. Yet if I open 'my computer' it isn't there. The two previous partitions that merged don't show up. I use Windows Computer Management to view the disk and it shows up there as 3 partitions - all NTFS, all list as 'Healthy' and all showing the correct sizes - 20, 30 and 250 Gbs. The 250 is the merged one. It shows 110 Gb of data and 140 Gb free, so it appears that none of the data is lost. It doesn't have a drive letter, it is just listed as 'New Volume'. When I right click the partition, 'open' and 'explore' are greyed out so unavailable. There is an option to 'Mark Partition as active'. If I click on it I get a warning that says: This disk contains your system partition. Changing the active partition onthis disk might make the disk not startable if the partition does not have valid sysytem files. Do you want to continue? But it's not my system disk. The 30 Gig is my system (C drive) and Comp mgmt shows that in the flow chart above. I'm not sure what to do because I DO NOT want to lose that data. I have my main C Drive and documents backed up, this is all multimedia - DVD's mostly, and a lot of my girlfriends school work projercts from a multimedia program (gulp). I need help with this one or I'm seriously in the dog house. How do I get the partition active, recognizable and accessible?

I just used partiton magics 'check for errors' utility and it showed me the same error message which is : Error #1652 Bad entry in external attribute list, File 0(0) However, I was able to view the contents of the disk but only in Partition magic and all the original folders are there. Still stymied though as to how to get them accessible \ into Windows explorer.

Ok... before you do this, maybe listen to some other opinions on here - I take no responsibility for pissed off girlfriends! Try to use TESTDISK to solve your problem. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Test... TestDisk is free data recovery software. It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). It saved me in the past when I had a very similar problem to yours, maybe it can help you. There is also PhotoRec: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Phot... This focuses on accessing the trapped data rather than correcting the drive. Info is on the website. Download both here. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Test...

Thnx I'll try those Argh! It just seems so close Using partition magics 'browse' function I can see all the files and data. There is a cut and paste feture but it won't work. I tried pulling out an mp3 that way. I read a little on PM's help files and I think I've found why it didn't work. the two partitions, although both NTFS, were formateed in differnt ways. One was a convert from FAT32, and the other was originally formatted as FAT 32. Apparently - and this is why you read instructions before you pull bonehead moves like this at 12:30 am before bed - apparently this creates different cluster types. Anyways I'll give those a go.

Oops, I meant to say that 'the other was originally formatted as NTFS'...can tell I'm tired

OK cx It's a good news bad news scenario... The good news is that my girlfriend gets up tomorrow morning (in about 5 hours now) and finds her data is all there (Whew!) I was able to recover the data on the portion of the merged partition that had the original NTFS file system on it - basically all the video files - about 85 Gigs. All my audio files - 25 gigs worth - are lost, but that's all my stuff. At least they are still unaccessible. I will try to recover the rest tomorrow cause it's 1:45 am here and I need sleep/. Thanks for the help.

That's a step up from where you were before... definitely back up the video files to DVDs/external drive before you go messing around any deeper.