I'm very tired, I've been working on this problem for about 7 hours, so please bear with me:

I attempted to use partition magic 8 to combine my C: and D: partitions due to space issues on my C: partition, both my C: and D: drives are on the same harddrive.

Partition magic messed up and now all I have is my C: drive with a huge unallocated space which used to be my D: drive, and my F: drive which is a seperate harddrive all together. Partition magic can not undelete my D: drive, and most of my programs cant figure out that its gone.

Help. I cant lose my D: drive, and every damn program I try to use to fix this expects me to pay 100 bucks for full functionality. I need to find a free way to get this stuff back, or at the very least know for sure that anything I buy will restore my D: partition.

Before you do anything again... BACK UP YOUR PARTITION!

Well it's probably too late now, but if that data on the D: partition is absolute mission critical stuff, then it will be well worth it to consult a professional. It might cost an arm and a leg, Im estimating $500 from readings, but look for a professional that is highly regarded (Atleast you know your data is safe), and has a 'No data, no charge' policy.

Anyway, I just might have the solution for you.
There is a utility called Boot It Next Generation (BING). It is a unique tool in a way, because it does not operate within Windows. It operates in MS-DOS. Before you can use the utility, you must create a MS-DOS boot disk or CD with BING on it.
Set your boot priority, to the drive with BING on it, A CD or a floppy drive, insert the freshly toasted media into the drive and reboot.

BING will load.

It will ask you a number of questions. One is whether you want to support more than 4 primary partitions, select your most appropriate answer. If BING asks you to create a seperate partition for BING's use, click NO! Or you will severely risk destroying your chances of getting the data back.
Bing should enter Maintenance Work Mode. Click the Partition Work button. A box appears with a few items in the list. Click the item that was your D: drive (usually distinguishable by "Free Space" wording and the appropriate size of the drive when you merged it. The Undelete option should appear. Luckilly I have not had to recover a drive, so Im not sure if the Undelete button will show. Let BING work, and once it is finished, reboot, and you should have your D: drive back.

Now, next time before you do any work that you think will destroy your files, BACK UP!

Norton Ghost is a really good utility, is cheap as chips and is bundled with other great programs from the Symantec range. It allows a complete backup to incremental backups, from CD's to network locations.
I highly recommend you get it.

Please note, if you absolutely have no idea what you are doing, bite the bullet and pay for a professional to do it. Or the holiday happy snaps might have to be retaken.

Hope that helps.

First of all, let's get one thing straight. Partition Magic is a tool, and it didn't mess up, tools are incapable of that, you ,essed it up by not knowing what you are doing or being careless with a very good program that requires no carelessness.
Your "d" drive is gone so it did it's job. Probably trying to merge the partitons, which PM does very well with the right input. If you have done nothing since, someone who knows how to do it can format the unallocated space and perhaps recover what was there with various software programs, as long as you put nothing else on there.

Bite the bullet and pay the $100.

I use a program called EasyRecovery Pro from Ontrack.

http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoveryprofessional/

it will be able to scan the drive even if the fat table is gone and build its own list of what is on the drive that is recoverable. so let it scan, then just hit recover. pretty basic...hope it helps.

there's a nice little program called Restoration which you can get from Snapfiles.com. it's free and works wonders! JUST MAKE SURE YOU RESTORE TO ANOTHER DRIVE!!!!! (it can be a usb flash drive)

i'm assuming that you haven't been tinkering around any further with the drive...

use this program...
http://www.bootcd.us/BartPE_Plugin_Details/522/iRecover-BartPE-Plugin-Edition.html

let's not give him a hard time about it, people make mistakes. We all have f---ed up here 'n there and pooped out huge mistakes onto ur own or other people's laps. try not be dick'ish bout it.

files are recoverable until it the drive itself is formatted. yes, sometimes files get damaged, corrupted, but the beauty of it is, most of the time u can save it. just have to know how to do it RIGHT is all.

Hi

just to add

http://www.partition-recovery.com/
may be of use
:)

Come now, there is no need to be a dick about this rich. Well, I guess some of us just cant help it.

I'm running through the programs suggested here, they all let me get right to the point where they start fixing stuff before they ask me to pay for them. Thankfully this allows me to see which ones work, I'll post with progress.

When you load a program, the installer writes to the registry telling the computer where all the parts of that program are and how to access those parts to run that program.

When you combined D:\ and C:\ you erased the D:\ pointer.

None of your D:\ programs are going to work unless you reinstall them so the registry files can be rewritten to locate them properly.

Whenever you do what you wanted to do; you need to use ONLY the empty space of any particular drive. For example you should have made the D:\ smaller (took away its empty space) and then incorporated the new "unallocated" space to make C:\ bigger.