How to Clean Up Mac without Spending a Penny?

Many times your Mac system might slow down when you put some extra data on the hard drive. It is always beneficial for you to clean up your Mac at regular interval of time in order to run multiple processes smoothly.

Today, in this article I will share with you some of the cool tips and tricks through which you can easily cleanup your Mac system without spending any money. So, take a cup of coffee and read the below mentioned tips of cleaning up Mac OS.

1. Clean the Mac Desktop:

This is the very first and most important step in order to improve the efficiency of a Mac OS X. Desktop is the first screen, which the system has to load for completing the booting process. So, if lesser number of icons will be present on your screen, your system will boot fast and save your valuable time. I suggest you to either delete them or put them in a separate folder so that OS of Mac doesn't start them at booting time. This will ensure that your system will improve and load at a faster speed.

2. Manage your startup items:

When you install any software on your Mac, they automatically change your system startup settings and they will load when your system will boot. Depending upon the setting, it may either become helpful for you or even slow down your system. And, if you left such small applications default, then they consume a lot of your system resources and become the main reason for slowness of the system. If you are a Mac OS X 10.10 user, then you can do this by going to System Preferences > System > Users & Groups > Login items and then uncheck those applications which you don’t want to run at the boot time.

3. Clean your hard drive:

Mac uses the free space of your hard drive as a “virtual memory” which plays a crucial role in the overall system performance. An over filled hard drive can't perform quickly or execute multiple application smoothly. To get through this, one of the best ways is to free up your hard drive in order to make room for the “virtual memory”.

For cleaning up your hard drive, you can empty your system log files, empty trash and other unnecessary applications that are useless for you.

4. Check Activity Monitor:

There are times when you don’t know which process is taking more memory and CPU usage, then Apple Activity Monitor comes handy. With the help of Activity Monitor, you can easily check which process is taking max CPU or RAM usage.

5. Embrace Mac cleaning utility tools:

This is the simplest way of optimizing and speeding up the Mac system. Here you can take the help of a utility tool such as OnyX. This software regularly maintains of your system and helps it in running smoothly.  

6. Upgrade your hardware:

If your system doesn't speed up despite applying all the above-mentioned tricks, then the last option is to upgrade your system hardware. You can look out for SSD, RAM and even large capacity hard drives.

That’s all from my side. I hope the above written tips will be helpful for you in speeding up your Mac OSX. 

How to recover data from RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 configurations?

The traditional data storage configuration system has been replaced by RAID in majority. The RAID configuration let you store large amount of data with enhanced features such as: data protection, reliability, availability, performance. Sometimes you may lose access to your RAID data due to various reasons such as: Hardware failure, drive corruption, array failure etc.

You can find here information about various RAID configurations and later on, we will discuss how to recover data once the RAID architecture fails or become inaccessible.

About RAID configurations:

The term RAID refers to redundant array of independent disks.
 

The configuration is based on the concept of storage virtualization. Virtualization means dividing the system resources among different applications. A storage system is basically a storage array or disk array or a filer. Storage virtualization uses virtualization to enable better functionality, data redundancy, performance improvement and more advanced features in computer data storage systems. RAID uses the concept of storage virtualization for combining multiple disk drive components into a logical unit.
 

Using this kind of methods, the computing and data processing gets faster. Along with these, it also provides better data protection, reliability, availability, performance, and capacity features.
 

Based on architectures, RAID is divided into different levels: RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 2, RAID 3, RAID 4, RAID 5, RAID 6 and RAID 10 etc.
 

Different RAID levels are explained below:

RAID 0: It is also known as a stripe set or striped volume. Data is distributed evenly between two or more striped disks that act as a single large logical disk. No redundancy, mirroring, parity is used. As there is no redundancy, if one drive fails the whole RAID volume fails.

RAID 1: The data of the drives are copied/ mirrored exactly on two or more disks. If one drive fails the RAID still keeps working as the same data is present on the other mirrored copy of the disk from where it can be accessed. No parity or striping is used.

RAID 2:  Bit-level striping is done rather than block level. The disks work in synchronization such that each sequential bit is on a different drive. Hamming code is used for error correction.

RAID 3: In this case, Byte level striping is done. The disks work in synchronization such that each sequential byte is on a different drive. For each corresponding byte parity is calculated and stored on a dedicated parity drive

RAID 4: It is based on block-level striping with dedicated parity

RAID 5: It is based on block-level striping with distributed parity among the drives. Minimum of 3 disks is required to create RAID 5. If a single drive fails, still it will be functioning.

RAID 6: It is based on block-level striping with double distributed parity thus provides fault tolerance up to two failed drives

Note: Data striping is a practice of saving consecutive segments of logical sequential data on different physical storage devices. disk mirroring is the replication of logical disk volumes onto separate physical hard disks in real time to ensure continuous availability A parity bit, or check bit is a bit added to the end of a string of binary code that indicates whether the number of bits in the string with the value one is even or odd. Parity bits are used as the simplest form of error detecting code.
 

Among the above RAID implementations, RAID 5 is the popular one.

Which one to choose?
 
In RAID 5 the data blocks and parity is striped among all disks. Though it offers good data protection, it has few drawbacks too.

Drawbacks:

• 20% of the disk space is allocated for parity.
• If the data blocks are large, the read performance will be slower.
• When a RAID 5 is to be rebuilt, a lot of complex parity calculations needs to be done for every block. Building the disk from scratch is quite sophisticated and time consuming. If a single sector on the RAID 5 array demise, the whole array needs to be rebuilt. As the size of disk will be more, the time taken for rebuilt will also increase accordingly. Comparatively RAID 6 is treated as a better choice in comparison to RAID 5. 

If even a single disk fails, the whole RAID 5 array becomes erroneous. The problem disk hasn’t been repaired, Meanwhile a second disk demises. In such case, you may lose your important data. In such case the faulty drive needs to be rebuilt while it’s online and in production. If RAID has stopped working properly due to any logical issues, you can have a quick and easy RAID recovery by using the Stellar Phoenix RAID Recovery software. The software can recover raid data from various RAID configurations of RAID 0, 5, 6 and 10 servers.
 

Using the software, you can recover deleted documents, files, folder, multimedia files and emails from Windows drives, external media, and RAID 0, RAID 5, and RAID 6 arrays. It lets you recover lost/missing RAID logical volumes, FAT, exFAT, and NTFS partitions of size 2 TB or more. You can preview the list of recoverable items before actual recovery.

The software offers 'Remote Recovery' feature to perform recovery over a network or remote location. To build the probable RAID construction, the software automatically matches patterns and parameters of the RAID configuration. If you don’t remember these details, simply select the 'Don't know' option and parameter values (Strip Size, Parity Order, Parity Delay etc.).

If the software fails to build RAID construction then you can perform RAW recovery using virtual RAID construction. Using the tool, you can create image of your problematic hard drive volume or external media and perform recovery from the drive image. Signature based recovery comes handy if the quick recovery fails to recover the lost data. The software let you recover corrupt or incorrectly burnt CD DVD burnt on Windows, Mac, UNIX or Linux. You can benefit the S.M.A.R.T features using the 'Drive Status' option of the tool. This feature let you gather the hard disk information about serial number, model number, size, status, temperature and firmware revision etc.

How to Install WhatsApp on Mac in 5 minutes?

If you are a Mac user and want to chat with your relatives or friends, then there is good news for you. Now, you can easily share photos or send message using WhatsApp. Today, in this article we will tell you how you can easily install WhatsApp in 5 minutes on Mac OSX and can take the full benefit from this new technology.

Currently, WhatsApp is the most popular and globally used online messaging application that anyone can use with just an internet connection. You can also have the option of using this message application on mobile based operating systems like Android, iPhone, Blackberry etc. 

If you want to chat with your close friends or relatives, no matter where they are located, you can use WhatsApp messenger for that.

Many people don’t know the fact that they can use WhatsApp on their Mac too. But, using the below mentioned steps, you can install WhatsApp on your Mac OSX very easily.

Step 1: Visit on Bluestacks.com, and download its latest version as per your Mac OSX.

Step 2: Once download completed, install this software.

Step 3: After installation of Bluestacks, you will need to select some option of your choice.

Step 4: Now, launch any of the major social networking site (either Facebook or Twitter or both) and login into it.

Step 5: Now, launch Mac default browser (i.e. Safari) or any other browser and visit http://www.whatsapp.com/download/

Step 6:In this step, visit on Bluestacks and go to either Facebook or Twitter

Step 7:Click on the link which is discussed in step 5 and download, install the WhatsApp on your system.

Step 8: Now, follow the setup process after clicking on the next button.

Step 9: In the final step, you will get a verification code which completes the installation processes.

Major features of WhatsApp for Mac OSX:

Some of the major and helpful features of WhatsApp for Mac are given below:-

1. It is less expensive or you can use it free of charge in the 1^st year. It makes the chatting easy with any of your friend or relatives.
2. Second major benefit of WhatsApp on Mac is that you don’t need to login every time when you want to use it. This is because all of your data are automatically saved at the first time.
3. Here, you also have the option of making groups of like-minded people for better online communication.
4. You can also send multimedia message i.e. both images and text message. This is the one of the major reason for high popularity of WhatsApp over other chatting messenger like Viber.

We hope up to here you got clear idea of how to install WhatsApp in Mac OSX and take the maximum advantage of this free messaging platform.

How to Recover Deleted Text Messages from Android Device?

Q. In order to free the memory space, I was deleting old message threads from my Samsung Grand. While doing so, I accidentally checked the ‘Select All’ option and pressed delete. All messages had GONE forever!

The entire message database had got cleared. Among the deleted ones, there were some important messages that I wanted to retrieve back.

Reply

I have successfully recovered my lost messages back, with the help of “Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery for Android” app without any hassle.

This is how I did this!

Follow the given procedure to recover deleted text messages from any Android device:

Before installing the Android recovery App to your device, you need to root it.

Follow the given steps to root your device:

First, you’ll need to download the Kingo Root application for rooting your device. You can get it from: http://www.kingoapp.com/.

Note: Other tools and methods are also available for android device rooting. I am mentioning the one that fitted best in my case. You can choose any other alternative that suits you better.

• Get your device fully charged.  Backup your smartphone data then go ahead with the Rooting process.
• Download the Kingo app setup (follow the link mentioned above) and install it on your PC
• Go to Settings > Click ‘About Phone’
• Keep tapping the Build Number for opening the Developer mode.
• Once it is opened, click on the developer mode option and select the check box for USB Debugging.
• Run the Kingo app set up and Install it on windows system.
• Connect your Samsung device to the system, scan and detect it using Kingo.

                             

• Click the root button to start the rooting process. 

                             

•  Once the rooting process is done, you are all set to recover lost data using ‘Stellar software for Android recovery’  

                                 

• Once the rooting process is completed, go to Google play store and install the Android data recovery app:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.stellarinfo.stellarandroidrecovery

• Run the Android data recovery app on your device. Scan using the app. It will scan for all the deleted data from the internal as well as external memory.
• After Scan completion, it will enlist all your recoverable items.
• You can preview the items and choose to save them at your desired location (may be your phone, any FTP site). You can also choose to share them via Facebook, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Google Drive etc.

Note: Before using  the Android recovery app, you need to root your device as rooting allows you install third party apps  to your android  device and let them communicate with the master boot records of the Android OS. Sometimes rooting the device can bring unpredictable changes such as:  it might void your device warranty or make it inaccessible. To avoid such situations, keep an updated backup copy of the entire device data. If rooting doesn’t go well, you can still restore your data from the backup. You can choose to back up the device using OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox or any other cloud storage service.

Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery for Android works great in all sorts of android data loss situations. Whether it's data loss due to virus infections, restoring factory settings, formatting, accidental deletion, OS error or rooting. The software let you recover photos, phone contacts, phone messages, and other data from internal and external storage of the Android device. It supports data recovery for android devices from Samsung, Motorola, Google, LG, Sony, HTC, ZTE and other popular Android phones and tablets. Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery for Android is a commendable utility to recover data from Android without any hassle.

What to do when Windows XP won’t boot?

Windows XP is among the most commonly used operating system even after the release of newer versions. A XP user can have to face several issues while OS startup, installing, re-installing, migrating, loading or working with the OS.

I am going to discuss the case when the Windows XP OS turns unbootable.

There can be various malefactors that can lead to an unbootable Windows XP. Some common factors among them are: corrupt start up record of active partition, OS startup file corruption, misconfigured hardware and driver settings , issues with the hardware and driver settings, any impending change to the system-critical components, corrupt/damaged Boot.ini file, corrupt partition boot sector or issues with the master boot record.
  
What to do when Windows XP won’t boot?

Solution 1:
Troubleshoot the issue by restoring the system from recent backup:

If you have back up your system using some backup utility then you can perform a restore by using the restore instructions of the tool.

Solution 2:
Troubleshoot the issue by using system restore:

To use the System Restore feature:

• Press [Ctrl][Alt][Delete] to restart the system.
• Select OS to start
• Or press F8 to go to Advanced Options.
• Select safe mode and hit Enter to run windows in safe mode
• Now, Go to Start>All Programs> Accessories> System Tools menu> System Restore.
• Select the option ‘Restore My Computer To An Earlier Time’. Next to continue further with restore process. 

Solution 3:
Troubleshoot the issue by booting the OS with the Last Known Good Configuration feature:

To boot the OS with Last Known Good Configuration:

• Press [Ctrl][Alt][Delete] to restart the system.
• Press F8 to open the Advanced Options.
• From the menu, choose the Last Known Good Configuration
• Hit Enter

Solution 4:
Troubleshoot the issue by booting from the Windows XP CD:

You can use the recovery console feature to fix the issue, to do so:

• Insert the XP CD. Reboot the system by pressing [Ctrl][Alt][Delete].
• Load all basic Setup files.
• At the ‘Welcome To Setup screen’ press R.
• This will start the Recovery Console.
• When you are prompted for, select the desired OS.
• To open recovery console select from desired option from the menu number
• Fill the login credentials. The recovery Console will prompt, continue with the recovery process.

Solution 5:
Troubleshoot the issue using a Windows startup disk:

To create a Windows startup disk:

• Insert a floppy drive into another XP computer (that has same configurations as your problem system)
• After inserting the disk, Go to: My Computer> right-click the floppy disk icon> Format command. This will open the format dialog box. Click Start.
• Once the format is done close all open windows. Go to C drive and copy the Boot.ini, NTLDR and Ntdetect.com file to the floppy drive
• Insert the floppy drive to the problem system. Reboot the system using [Ctrl+Alt+Delete] command. Boot the OS from Windows startup disk to start Windows normally

Solution 6:
Troubleshoot the issue by using Bootcfg tool:

Use Bootcfg tool to fix a corrupt Boot.ini:

• Boot the system using the Windows XP CD
• Open the Recovery Console.
• Open the Recovery Console command prompt
• Run the command: Bootcfg /parameter

Where /parameter can be one of the following:

• /Add--Checks for all OS installations on the disk. And let you add a new installation in the Boot.ini file.
• /Scan--Scans all Windows OS installations on the disk.
• /List—shows all the parameters listed in the Boot.ini file.
• /Default--Using this option you can set the default OS as the main boot entry.
• /Rebuild—Let you re-create the Boot.ini file.
• /Redirect— using this option (with tow parameters Port Baudrate] | [UseBiosSettings]) you can redirect the boot operation to a specific port under the Headless Administration feature.
• /Disableredirect--Disables the redirection.

Solution 7:
Troubleshoot the issue by using Fixboot Recovery Console tool

Fix a corrupt partition boot sector using Fixboot:

• Boot the system using the Windows XP CD
• Open the Recovery Console.
• Open the Recovery Console command prompt
• Run the command: Fixboot [drive]\

Here, [drive] is the drive letter where a new partition boot sector is to be written.

Solution 8:
Troubleshoot the issue by running the Fixmbr tool:

To run the Fixmbr tool:

• Boot the system using the Windows XP CD
• Open the Recovery Console.
• Open the Recovery Console command prompt
• Run the command: Fixmbr [device_name]

Here, [device_name] is the drive device pathname where a new master boot record is to be written. For example: DeviceHardDisk0

Solution 9:
Troubleshoot the issue by disabling automatic restart

To do so:

• At the Windows XP boot screen, Select the operating system to start or press [F8] (if hear beep and open Windows Advanced Options
• Choose the option to ‘Disable The Automatic Restart On System Failure item’
• Hit [Enter]. 

Solution 10:

Troubleshoot the issue by performing an in-place upgrade

To perform an in-place upgrade:

• Insert the Windows XP CD.
• Restart the system, Select to boot from the CD.
• The Windows XP Setup screen will open. Press Enter to continue.
• On the License Agreement page and press [F8] to agree and continue.
• First Setup will search the previous installation, after that you can see a Setup screen with two options.
• Option 1: repair the selected installation by pressing R
• Option 2: install a fresh copy of Windows XP by pressing ‘Esc’.
• To perform an in-place upgrade, press R.
• After the in-place upgrade is done, reinstall all the Windows updates.

I hope this article will prove helpful for those who are facing the unbootable Windows XP problem.

How to recover lost photos from Nikon digital camera?

Digital cameras are most widely used for personal uses as well as for professional photography. It a common scenario that you may lose the clicked photos from the camera SD card in various situations such as while transferring photos from camera to computer system. There can be various other photo loss scenarios like: issues with the storage media/SD card , accidental deletion of photos, accidentally formatting the memory card, photo loss while data transfer from camera to system or vice versa and software failure etc.

How to recover lost photos from a digital camera?

In a digital camera, a flash memory is used to store the clicked photos known as SD or SDHC card. The type of memory card may vary such as SD card, SDHC card, SDXC  card, CF card, xD Picture Card, multimedia card MMC, MicroSD card, xD card, MicroSDHC card, MicroSDXC card, SD mini  or Memory Stick etc.

When you press ‘delete’ button to delete a photo from your camera, it deletes the item from memory. However it isn’t actually erased, only the space will be marked as free (reference to access it, gets deleted) and the allocated space is freed for further use. Same is the case for memory card formatting. Thus there are chances of photo recovery but if the deleted data has been overwritten by some other data then it cannot be recovered anyway.

As there is no built in trash/recycle bin in the camera from where you can restore the deleted photos back. So there is no direct method for performing photo recovery from a digital camera. You require using some professional photo recovery tool that can be run over some Windows based OS with the problem digital camera/SD card attached to it.  These tools let you scan for the deleted items and let you preview the list of all recoverable items. Later on, you can save the recoverable items at your desired location.

How to perform photo recovery using photo recovery software?

• Download the software from: http://www.stellarinfo.com/digital-media-recovery.htm
• Install the software on your Windows based system.
• Attach the camera memory card to the system. Run the software.
• The main interface will be opened. Click the option to 'Recover Photo, Audio, & Video'. From the listed media devices, select the one that is to be recovered.
• After selecting your problem media/memory card click ‘Scan now’. The scan process will begin; the recoverable files will be shown in the left pane of the window. Once the scan process is completed, you can select the all/desired item listed in the left pane and preview them.

Note: You can also choose the ‘Advance Scan’ option. This option lets you perform customized recovery on basis of file types. You can choose to scan the media according to the file list (i.e. ‘Photo’, ‘Audio’, or ‘Video’) or the data range from the storage media

• Finally you can select all or desired items from the recoverable items list and save them at your desired location.

Using the above software, you can recover lost photos, HD MOV files and other multimedia files from memory cards, digital cameras and internal & external drives. It supports recovery of different image, audio and video file formats.

It supports BMP, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, Mamiya (MOS, MEF), Paint Shop Pro Image File (PSP), and Picture File (PCT) etc. image file formats. The supported audio file formats are: RPS, MP3, AU, WAV, MIDI, OGG, AIFF, RM, WMA, RA, M4P and M4A.The supported video file formats are MP4, 3GP, AVI, MPEG, Matroska Video File (MKV), AVCHD Video File (MTS), Divx Encoded Movie File (DIVX), MOI Video File, Video Object File (VOB), OGG Media Player (OGM), 3G2, ASX.

The above given are some common features of “Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery (Windows)” software. The software is laced with advanced and powerful photo recovery features.

How to undelete files in Windows 7?

While working with a computer system, it is a common scenario that some of the user files get deleted due to some reason or he himself deleted it accidentally or intentionally. There can be various other reasons that can cause Windows file deletions. Possible reasons could be corrupt logical structure of the hard drive, partition header corruption due to virus or malware, power surges while working with partition data, partition corruption due to hardware issues, bad sectors in hard drive, bad RAM etc.

Suppose a file/folder has been deleted from Windows 7 and Later on, the user requires getting it back then how to undelete files in Windows 7?

In this article, I am going to discuss the methods for retrieving important files from Windows 7 system.

How to undelete files in Windows 7?

If some file is missing, you might have placed it somewhere or got it deleted. Use the Windows Explorer or File Explorer search feature to search for the lost file.

Recover files from recycle bin: If haven’t deleted the files permanently, you can restore it back from Recycle Bin. If the number of deleted files in recycle bin is large you can simply search the file by name or right-click in the window, point to Sort By, and select Date Deleted to view files

What if you have deleted an item and emptied the recycle?

If you don’t find your files in the recycle bin, you can look for it at cloud storage services (such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or SkyDrive). Just log into your cloud account, go to trash and recover your files from there, if found.

Recover files from backup: If you have a recent backup, you can restore the deleted file from there.

Note: You must backup your important data on regular intervals. So that in case of data loss situations you can restore it back. You can restore data using the built-in Windows backup tools too. Windows 7’s previous versions can create virtual image of your files automatically and lets you restore them to a previous versions using System Restore functionality. In Windows 8, you are given one more recovery option i.e. ‘File History’ that isn’t available in previous versions and can be used to create exact copy of your stored data to an external storage device (external hard drive, USB, Flash drive or any similar kind of storage device).

Procedure to undelete files in Windows7 from a recent backup or previous versions is given below.

Follow the given steps to restore files from a backup:

• Go to Start > Control Panel> System and Maintenance, and then click Backup and Restore
• Select the option ’Restore my files’, and then continue with the steps followed in the wizard.

Follow the given steps to restore a deleted file or folder from previous versions:

• Go to Start and open computer
• Right click the folder/drive (e.g. C:\)that contained the deleted files/folders and click and then click restore previous versions.
• This will show you the previous versions of the deleted files. The list will contain all the saved backup data and restore points. Choose a previous version of the file/folder that should contain the deleted data. Drag the item at any desired location to get it saved.

Follow the given steps to restore a deleted file or folder to a previous state:

• Right click the file/folder. Click ‘Restore previous versions.’ To bring it back to a previous state.
• This opens the list of previous versions of the file saved on a backup (Windows backup or restore points).
• From the list, Select the desired version and click Open to view. Then after confirmation, click restore.

Note: Windows Backup doesn’t provide you this facility for viewing the previous versions. If restore button isn’t available, open and save the file at some other location instead of restoring/replacing the current version.

If all the above steps fails then how will you recover data?

If some data on your Windows drive has been lost and you cannot find it anywhere else, stop using the drive immediately and seek for an alternative to get them recovered. If you are performing operations with drive then the deleted data can be overwritten and recovery becomes more difficult.

So the first thing is shut down the computer immediately. Scan your drive using an efficient Windows data recovery software. If you could find your file in the scan results, you can recover it and save to your desired location.   

Note: Before applying any data recovery tool, it’s advisable to make a copy of your drive. Better you remove the problematic hard drive from the computer and attach it as a secondary drive in some other computer. Then scan it using an efficient Windows data recovery software.

If all of the above recovery methods fail, seek some professional data recovery company. They deal with physical as well logical data corruption. Using powerful recovery methods, they provide you the recovered drive data, all you need to do is ‘pay for the services’.

Sometimes the corruption/data loss is much severe that no full data recovery is possible at all. Then sorry to say you have lost some or all of your precious data! To avoid such situations, you must always backup your data on regular intervals, also enable the File History or Windows Backup features.

How to fix "hard drive missing In Windows7"?

A Windows partition is simply a logical volume for storing data. There can be several scenarios when you can face the missing partition problem such as: while installing, re-installing or updating the Operating system.

Sometimes it happens that the partition is not visible to you (.i.e. missing partition) or you can see it but cannot access its contents (.i.e. inaccessible partition). Majority of Windows 7 users have to face this issue after they have reinstalled Windows 7.

In this article, I am going to discuss the way to fix “Missing hard drive/partition in Windows7”.

Hard drive partition can be missing/accessible/lost due to several reasons such as:

• Corrupt logical structure of the hard drive.
• Partition header corruption due to virus or malware
• Power surges  while working on the system
• Partition corruption due to hardware issues
• Bad sectors in hard drive
• Bad RAM etc.

Consider one of the commonly faced problems with Windows 7 users: While installing the Windows 7 operating system, I have formatted my drives (named D :\). I installed the OS then. But after the process is done, I cannot find one of my drives, it’s missing.

How to get it back?

Solution:

First check your disk status with Device Manager and ensure that everything is fine with drive, it’s not going to die soon. Simply, go to My Computer->Manage and Select Disk Management. This will enlist information about installed disks.

If everything is fine then go ahead with the next step.

Check whether the partition exists in "Disk Management" or not.

To do so:

• Open the Run dialog box by holding the “Windows” key & pressing the "R" key.
• Run diskmgmt.msc. This will open "Disk Management".
• Check if there is any partition without a drive letter
• If there is such partition then do:
• Right-click it
• Go to "Change Drive Letter and Paths..." > "Add" button --> Add --> Select the drive letter -->
• Finally Click OK.

See if this helps. If the problem still exists, opt another possible way for fixing the issue.

Fix the issue by running diskpart.

To do so:

• Open command window.
• Type 'diskpart' and enter. This will open the disk partition manager window.
• In the command prompt window type 'list volume' and enter. The output will be the list of hard disk volumes. There, type “select missing_volume(eg. D:/ drive)”. Hit enter.
• After selecting the missing volume, Type 'assign' and Open my computer to check whether  the drive is visible or not.

If the problem still exists, try changing ‘partition Drive Letter and Paths’.

To do so:

• Go to> Control Panel> select ‘All Items view’ > Administrative Tools> Computer Management
• If the UAC window prompts, select ‘Yes’.
• Close the Administrative Tools window.
• From the left pane go to Storage> Disk Management. Here, all connected hard drives and partitions will be shown. From the enlisted partitions, choose the missing one.
• Click ‘Change Drive Letter and Paths’.
• Click Add
• Click ok

You can also open Disk Management by running diskmgmt.msc command.

To do so:

• Go to start > search bar> run diskmgmt.msc command. The Disk Management interface will be opened.
• From lower half of your disk management interface, select Drive without any drive letter.
• Now choose the option “Change Drive Letter and Paths”.
• Click the Add button. Choose a drive and click OK to assign selected drive letter.
• Now restart and check whether the missing drive is shown or not?

If you are still not able to access your Windows drive data then, try using standard hard drive partition recovery tools. These software are a kind of Do-It-Yourself utility that can scan your windows for the missing hard drive partitions and let you recover the data back along with the lost or inaccessible partitions. If the lost partition isn’t shown in the scan result, you will not be able to recover it. Try out various software, opt the one that provides the best results. If still nothing helps, No Good luck then! Your drive might be beyond recovery. You may require sending it to some professional recovery company that can anyhow recover your lost data and send it back to you. er