I got to the nether for the first time, promptly saw a ghast, and started running away from it. The game suddenly crashed and closed completely. On reloading the game, I was back in the nether, but I couldn't see my portal. I assumed I'd run a bit away from it when I saw the ghast, so starting looking around. Half an hour later I still hadn't found it, so I fired up Minutor to help my search.
I set up a colour scheme where lava, netherack, gravel, soul sand, fire and bedrock are all alpha 0. Obsidian and Portal are set to bright green, fully visible. It seems from this map that my portal has gone completely. I checked at a variety of depths, just to be sure, and there's not a trace of green to be seen.
Is it possible that my portal has disappeared?
Best Answer
Shinrai pretty much has it right for what likely happened.. Crashed game will not save the chunks so the portal never got generated and the Nether likely regenerated fresh, again, when you loaded the world back up again.
However.. easy way to solve this is go back to as close to where your portal led you the first time, and die.. You will go back to the over world. The nether will be saved -including- the items you just dropped from dying. YOu should be able to hop into your portal again and while it -WILL- generate the portal in a new location (9 out of 10 times atleast), it will be close to where it was the first time, and you can go pick up your items again..
Just do not die near fire or lava that may destroy your items when you drop them.
EDIT: To estimate where the portal will appear in the nether from the overworld coordinates, divide the over world coordinates by 8.. But remember that the portal is somewhat randomly placed from that location to be within 128(ish) units from it.