Recovery of deleted partition in Momentus XT SSD

[Esmond Ivers]

I was upgrading my friend’s Sony Vaio laptop for which I brought a Momentus XT SSD. I installed it in the laptop and ran Maxblast 4 to create the partitions for data storage. I had divided the hard disk space as per my need with a last drive of space 4 GB. After the partition was successful, I started with installation of Windows Vista on it. I reached the part where the OS installer asks to assign the drive where the OS should be installed. At this point, I noticed that the drive of 4 GB space was not shown. I exited the installation and again ran the Maxblast 4 to see the existing partitions. But the 4 GB space was nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t even assigned to any other drive, it just disappeared. Can anyone tell me how to get the deleted partition back?

[Dannai7]

The problem is with the Windows Vista’s installer. It works on the new partition rule, where the small blocks of partition will be used to store the expanded files by the OS. This new rule also aligns the physical blocks with file system. I have known many people complaining about Vista not properly partitioning the disk. Many people experienced issues where the hard disk space assigned to a drive was not fully utilized as other OS does. You can try formatting and partitioning the hard disk of laptop by using default disk management system of Microsoft Vista.

[Chahel]

Windows operating system reserves a amount of hard disk space for storing the cache files. This space is not as large as 4 GB. It is around 100 mb for 500 GB of hard disk. When the Windows Vista installer saw a 4 GB partition, it assigned it to SLC NAND. So now it won’t be viewable and thus you won’t be able to edit it. If the NAND was assigned to partition under the new partition rule, then it will be completely under control of Windows Vista now. It is not deleted, but it is out of user’s reach.

[Pinlunk]

One way of recovering the lost drive is by flashing the latest version of firmware in the SSD. This will erase all the existing data and restore the defaults. This will bring back the lost 4 GB space.

[Naq]

The 4 GB of NAND is never completely controlled by OS. You can use a proper disk utility to detect the lost 4 GB hard Disk space. The disk utility can be used to point out the lost section. You should try using the Maxblast 4 again to reformat the hard disk. This will recover the lost 4 GB hard disk space. You can then merge this space with other big drive. This will stop Windows from detecting small space parts which it will take under own control.

[Gameli]

The 100 MB that the was discussed earlier in this post is the memory reserved by the hard disk for bitlocker drive encryption. When the Windows Vista found vacant 4 GB, it assigned it for bitlocker drive encryption. It is not a defined partition, so you cannot delete or edit that space using Windows OS installer or using any other utility from Windows Vista. You can edit the reserved space from BIOS menu with use of appropriate tools.

[Denholm]

The best method to solve this problem is by using SeaTools that runs on DOS mode. It writes zeros in the wasted space and restores it to factory settings. After this you will need to flash the firmware of the hard disk to rest it to the condition like it is just shipped.