Recover lost disc partition

My son in Kent (long way from me) has 2 HDDs in his PC. It seems that the second one (not the one containing the C: drive) has suffered a problem. It's partitioned into 2 drives and one of them has 'disappeared'. The other is apparently OK.

Could it be a partition table problem?

Is there any software or similar, preferably free, that could help him to view the partition table and repair it?

http://www.ubcd4win.com/ (probably) and any Linux installation CD would allow him to view and correct the partition table. I assume he remembers the size of the partition(s).

Fixing the partition table is necessary but may not be sufficient to recover the data on the "missing" partition.

I've used @ctive Partition Recovery a few times when other products wouldn't work. It's not free if you want a non-demo version but you can download the free demo, see if it finds enough to recover, and pay if it does.

http://www.partition-recovery.com/

Recuva is free and can recover the files from lost partitions. There is also testdisk, which is commandline, but slightly more powerful.

Thanks for these replies . I've passed the information to him. See what the outcome is.