Need Urgent Help With HDD

talking_walnut

I need help with my hard drive, it's become corrupted (again).

I built my own PC at the end of the summer and decided to put in a 200gb hard disk so I'd have plenty of storage space. I partitioned it with FAT32 because I was installing Linux as well and I wanted read & write access. Things were workin fine at first but then everything got corrupted and all the files turned to gibbirish (I have a screen shot if that would help).

Anyway, I figured it was just a short coming with FAT32 that it couldn't handle a drive so big so I converted to NTFS. This was a couple of months ago and everything was working fine untill today. I was trying to move some files on my PC but I got some error about the file being corrupted or something. I then restarted my PC and my drive was gone completely.

I ran Easy Recovery Pro (the prog. I used before to rescue my files) but it reported my drive as only 128gb.

Can anyone suggest a solution for me and why the hell this might be happening?
I really need help urgently as all my stuff was on that drive.

(By the way, I have a second (primary) drive with my OS's on it)

cartman

amd motherboards dont go over 130gigs,
if you throw a 200gig into it you will only be able to use 130gigs of it.
You'll have to get a highpoint rockett 133 ide card to get it at 200gigs,

also , all your data is gone.

talking_walnut

You sure?

It was workin away for ages and it's a new mobo?

Its an A7N8X Deluxe ver 2.0

Sir Random

Does the drive make any clicking sounds when accessing? Any strange sounds at all?
If it's not physically damaged, you could try some other recovery software to get your files back (google for shareware stuff)

talking_walnut

It doesn't seem to make any noises (appart from the regular ones).

I have a tool for recovery that worked before but now its only reading the drive as 128gb. I'm trying to upgrade my bios but f*ck me if its not awkward in Win2000.

talking_walnut

Got Bios updated. Didn't seem to do any good.

If it is the 130gb limit thing, will it be sorted if I partition the drive into sizes less than 130??

jonhate

amd motherboards dont go over 130gigs,

Cartman not true..I have an amd board the ata-controller supports 48-bit LBA but the os needs to be told that you are using 48-bit LBA.

Anywho,

For Example in windows 2000 you need to go into the registry and input in your ATA Controller Variables ENABLEBIGLBA or something similar an set its value to 1 hey presto problem solved..

ps i have same board as you seker16 when i find the link i'll post it up...It should solve your problems.

here is the xp link(looks exactly same as the one i used)...It should work for 2000.
What service pack you got for 2000.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/q303/0/13.asp&NoWebContent=1

http://www.sanx.org/tipShow.asp?articleRef=60


Hope this helps.

talking_walnut

Thanks for that johate, I'm gonna try it now.

I've service pack 4 for win2000 and I'm getting the latest updates as I type.

Did you say that you have the same mobo as me? Is it running with a big HDD for you with no problems??

Thanks a million for your input.

jonhate

YE I have A7N8X Deluxe...dont ask what bios i haven't upgraded it.

I have WD 160 GB hard drive.

I partitioned and formatted the drive through a with a low level utility but 2000 wouldn't recognise the last 30 gigs or so.....I did that EnableBigLba, then rebooted and the final partition appeared.

Hope it works!
ww)

talking_walnut

Hmm. Well I did the Enable Big LBA fix and also installed all the latest updates that microsoft had for me (including some kinda driver update for my mobo).

The bad news is that my hard disk still isn't showin up in windows.

The good news is tha EasyRecovery Pro is now showing the right size for my disk.
Hopefully now I can recover the data to another drive and reformat my corrupted drive and everything will be hunky dory from now on.

johate - are you using NTFS or FAT32? I'd like to be able to go back to FAT32 if possible.

jonhate

I'm using NTFS.

I even have it dual booting Linux as well.

kmb

Hi there,had this problem last year and it turned out to be a faulty ide cable so it may worth your while putting in a new ide as my data also got corrupted like yoursalso in a nforce motherboard but mine was abit nf7-s.regds kmb