“I recently had a Spam ware/Virus situation which has caused serious problems. I ran an anti-virus program to save my computer. After the virus was cleaned up, I noticed that the C drive is not showing in ‘My Computer’. I restarted my PC several but in a vain. I have some important data and I don’t know if my data is still there on my C drive after the virus attack. Please help in finding the C drive and the data”.
Your C drive is missing from the “My Computer” list obviously due to virus attack. Do not mistake this as an insulting comment, but situations like this teach us the importance of data backup which most of us tend to ignore. Whether accidental or intentional data loss situation does occur and backups are the only to save yourself from this kind of issue.
Before we proceed with a viable solution to get back files from C drive that is not showing up, do not feed any new data into the drive. Doing so will only hamper the data recovery success. New data will overwrite the existing ones making it difficult to recover. Of all the data loss issues, hard drives are the most devastating, as it stores something important and maybe something secret data that wouldn’t want to lose.
Unhide C Drive to Recover Data:
To recover data, first you have to make your C drive visible and let’s see some of the possibilities; Your C drive is not showing in My Computer maybe because it is hidden. To check if your C drive is hidden, you have to download a free program called TweakUI which has the option to hide and unhide the drives. You can download it from Microsoft link: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
Once the program is installed, you can find it in Start->Programs->Powertoys for Windows XP->Tweak UI. Open the app and under ‘My Computer’ on the left side, tick-mark the drives you want to show and select Apply and then OK. If the C drive you are looking is already selected, uncheck it, close the window. Open it and checkmark again, click Apply and then OK. You might be required to restart your computer. Now, check under ‘My Computer’ and C drive should be listed there.
Way to Retrieve Files from C drive:
Now that your C drive is visible, it’s time to retrieve unavailable data from it. Yodot Hard Drive Recovery is a comprehensive data recovery software that does a deep scan of the drive to get all your data back. You don’t have to be a tech savvy to use this application. It comes with an easy to understand user interface making it easy for you to follow each step without any hassle. The tool supports all latest versions of Windows along with few older versions, so there is no need to worry about the compatibility issues.
Note: This hard drive recovery tool can be used even if C drive or other partitions are not shown on the hard disk. The smart scan of the software has ability to recognize partitions that are unseen and recover data from it safely.
Yodot Hard Drive Recovery tool works on SATA, IDE, SCSI drives with ease. It even recovers accidentally deleted C drive files and formatted or re-formatted partitions, corrupted, damaged or dead internal and external hard drives as well. The utility can recover up to 300 file types which like media files, MS Office files, Outlook data files to name a few.
Guide to Restore Data from Not Showing C Drive in My Computer:
- Download, install the software on another drive - not on C Drive
- Run the application and select Partition Recovery option from main screen
- The software lists the detectable partitions/drives on the computer. Select Local disk C from the list.
- The tool starts scanning the C drive to locate the data and the recovered data will be displayed in Data View and File Type View as scaning completes
- You can Preview the files or choose to Save it on a different location and complete the recovery process
Useful Tips:
- Make a habit of taking regular and multiple backups of important data
- Protect your computer against malware with anti-virus software
