Finally recovered the lost partition with everything and anything. For the recored and because somebody might need it: Installed Acronis Disk Director, because of its boot selector, which lets you choose from which partition/disk and so on you will boot. (Even CDs and DVDs can be thrown into the mix.) Installed Restorer 2000 Pro. Turned off the computer. Plugged in the old disk. Turned the computer on and chose the new installation to boot in. Started Restorer and told it to recover the files from the lost partition (that Windows said was not formatted) onto another partition on the new disk. BTW, the new partition should be bigger than the old one, because Restorer will restore everything. The files that were moved twice will be restored three times. So, four hours passed. I read a part of Martin's A Feast for Crows. And finally, it was finished. Two files out of 45800 were lost. That includes about 5000 files that were duplicates. Nevertheless: All hail Restorer 2000 Pro! The problem ultimately, I think, lies in software. It appears that Windows whacked that partition when shutting down. Possibly because of bad disk cable. So I've got a brand new 200GB hard and the old 160GB one, which will end as a backup drive. But now for the full installation of programs and stuff on the new disk. And then the installation of Windows and select programs on my new computer. I hate installing Windows.

-- erlik