Can't access hard drive partition

Helpline Q&A Directory

My Dell PC came with a utility called Snapshot, which saves the operating system, applications and user files to a reserved area of the hard disk. This means that, in the event of problems, a saved copy of the system can be restored. However, it recently failed and came up with the message 'Invalid Picture'. I now can't access either of my two saved copies or the 4GB of space on which they reside. My system's Bios recognises that a 13.6GB hard drive is installed, but My Computer only sees 2.36GB used with 7.19GB free, making a total of 9.55GB.

I contacted the Dell helpline and they advised me that Snapshot was developed as a recovery tool to be used within the first 30 days and is not guaranteed outside that period. Moreover, it is no longer shipped due to problems that were experienced. The only solution Dell could suggest was 'Fdisk, format and reinstall'. The last two parts of that procedure are too fraught and beyond my competence and I would rather abandon my missing 4GB. Can you think of a simpler, risk-free solution?

We would deduce that the Snapshot utility uses a dedicated partition to store its information. This partition is formatted in a way that is not recognised by Windows or DOS, so it is invisible to them. This is why the space does not show up in My Computer.

The Dell helpline is basically correct. To create a C drive that occupies the whole 13GB, you must use Fdisk to delete the special partition and your existing one (which will destroy all your data), create a new partition to fill the disk, reformat it and reinstall everything.

As an alternative - which would leave your C drive intact - you could delete just the special partition, create a new one in its place, format it and use it as a D drive. However, this would change the drive letters used by your removable drives, D becoming E and so on. You would also have to reinstall any applications that expect your CD-ROM to be on the D drive. Given that you are using less than half of your current C drive capacity at the moment, why bother?

If you need the space, there is an easier solution but it will cost money. A partition management utility like PowerQuest's PartitionMagic (www.powerquest.com) would, after deleting the other partition, be able to expand the existing one to take up the space it occupied without requiring reformatting and reinstallation. It also has a graphical interface making it easier to use than Fdisk.