I guess I know the ultimate answer already but there's too many variables that don't line up for me to be satisfied with it.
Last night and this morning I was shrinking partitions using Windows Storage Manager and Ubuntu's/GRUB's built in partition manager. Everything was fine, I installed Partition Magic in Windows as it became evident I needed to move free space around the drive but it gave me an error about an unrecognisable drive letter which it says is normal for some OEM installations.
All fine so far, so this morning I attempted to delete one of the partitions created using GRUB and Windows gave me an error about insufficient resources. That didn't make sense with 4GB of RAM and 2.2GB in use. I attempted again to delete the partition and it froze for a solid hour while I worked away in the background. I hard reset it and it stuck on the Windows startup screen, here's where it goes wild.
So starting in safe mode brought me to classpnp.sys, Lenavo one click restore froze on loading files and the Ubuntu installer gave me an error about insufficient memory at startup from a USB drive.
I opened her up and tried each memory stick on their own, same result. So then I removed the hard drive and put it into an external hard drive case and tried it in a few other computers all with the same result.
It says installing drivers and stays on installing NSI External Drivers until I remove it and then it will say finished. When I plug it back in it doesn't show anywhere except Device and Printer manager where it just says External. Clicking on the properties dialog and double tapping the NSI driver hangs the properties dialog.
To me it seems the drive is a goner, but I'm not convinced how as it was working fine before nmy partition messing and if it were a partitioning problem it should show up as a drive nonetheless unless something in the computing world has changed as of late that I'm unaware of.
Any ideas as to how to proceed? I could really do with the work I was doing this past day or two!
EDIT 1: Ok after some playing around with low level partition managers via Ultimate Boot CD I've progressed a little. First I can now enter all of the utilities that are on the utility partition. And now it also shows up when I put it as an external USB drive. In Partition Recovery application it shows the partition and it's contents but no recovery option. Weird eh? It also shows the drive letter as *. Still not sure how to proceed at this point.
EDIT 2: Ok I managed to get it to show me the hard drives by activating another partition using a low level partition tool and then re-activating the original partition. Now the mad part, Windows 7 seems to have created a 200mb partition at the beginning of the drive, if I load the second partition it lists my folders in EASUS Partition application but I can't recover it, the option is disabled. I've just created an entire disk image. I am thinking I can just delete the first hard drive and set the start of the second to 0?
Best Answer
First of all...
#1 Rule of Partitioning:
Avoid mix-and-matching tools, unless you really know what you're getting into!
I've managed to delete partitions when using different tools quite easily, often because of alignment requirements that don't match or because entries don't get put in the correct order.
(It seems like a trivial issue, but it's very complicated, because of how many backward compatibility issues there are.)
That said, I think this has nothing to do with your drive failing. It probably isn't. Rather, perhaps the partition table is invalidated, and Device Manager is getting confused?
What I would recommend:
Try taking an image of the drive before doing anything. (It might be possible for the drive as a whole, even though the individual partitions don't show up.)
Try and if you can undelete any partitions with a program like EASEUS Partition Recovery.
Post any particular errors you might get, so that we can diagnose the results better.