Master Boot Record

Not sure if this is for hardware or software forum but hardware forum hasn't worked for me,so here I am.
I have a 200g externial hard, and I partition it into 3 sections months ago.
Today I was looking at some files on one of the partitions and all of a sudden the drive I was examining sort of vanished. The other two drives appear fine, but this one lost its volume name and no data appears to be there. No deleting or formatting has done, but I think the partition table somehow got corrupted.
I am running XP. The only thing I have on the drive is Mp3's & Mpeg's, no programs. I have ran a virus scan. Any advise on how to recover my partion table on this drive.

 

Cant say why you lost the partition,but since you have a 200gb drive,you would require the latest service packs and bios version and driver to run it.There are a lot of data recovery tools available.But try this first control panel>admininistrative tools>computer management>disk management>action>rescan disks.
http://majorgeeks.com/Active_Partition_Recovery_d1017.html
http://majorgeeks.com/Partition_Table_Doctor_d4129.html

 

Disc Director Suite may help you: http://majorgeeks.com/Acronis_Disk_Director_Suite_d2889.html.
Once I had the same problem: I lost the whole partition! I became already almost sure that I would never recover my files, then my friend advised DDS and it did it! Besides now I use DDS for partitioning HDD and it was useful for me in creating dual boot.. So it is very pretty thing and I LOVE it.