cgsecurity.org

I thought I'd drop a line of thanks here, since I flew very close to the sun with this problem, and based on a thread found at the following link was directed to TestDisk:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/26377 ... -type-ntfs

I had used a bootable CD of a well-regarded program called MiniTool Partition Wizard 7.1:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content ... anager.htm

I used it merely to move a small partition on my NTFS data drive (Disk 1) so that the partition was located to the "left" of the free space. This would allow me to then use Disk Management in Win7 to expand the partition.

MiniTool performed its move without incident, and I booted into Win7 expecting to be able to expand the partition. Instead, the entire 465GB drive was listed as RAW. Other tools that I tried to view the drive said RAW, too. MiniTool always showed it correctly, however, even after booting back into it to look around. This puzzles me.

TestDisk saw what was really there, unlike everything else save MiniTool. This looked right to me:

#1330635930 Disk /dev/sdb - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 60802 255 63
1 : start= 126, size= 35503524, Id=07, P
2 : start=104863744, size=871905280, Id=07, P
3 : start=4227716862, size=1044019458, Id=0F, E

So I stepped through the program, did a Quick Search (it didn't find anything new, which was correct since there were only two partitions on Disk 1), and then asked the program to Write. One reboot later, and a quick fix of the drive letter for the first partition on Disk 1, and all was well again.

So, I guess, the moral is that MiniTool wrote out the MBR Partition Table in a...funny way...to use a technical term??

Thanks for your feedback!