Hard Disk Trouble

Col_Loki

I have a 160gb hard disk , i formatted it fully (160gb) , then put it into a PC which could only see 127gb and i filled it with stuff. Now the problem is when i plug it in again (external casing this time) it only see's a 20gb partition and doesent see the other 127gb of files at all.

Anyone know how i could sort this out, via program or trick? I really really dont want to loose this info.

Any help would be much appreciated.....

zod

can you see the partition in disk manager ?
right click my computer - manage
disk management

Dingatron

That's a strange one. You need to enable support for large ATA drives in order to see the full 160GB. Did you create another partition or something? External or internal shouldn't matter.

Col_Loki

It shows up as if the 127gb isint partitioned even though its got loads of info on it. The computer im plugging it into has SP2 and can see >127gb ......

I only get 1x20gb showing up to read (ie in my computer)......is there any way to asign a drive letter to it without loosin the data? Bloody annoying so it is.

Dingatron

Did you by any chance change the HDD jumpers when moving it to the external caddy. Some drives have a jumper setting to set it to < 33Gb for older motherboards.

Col_Loki

Good thinking but thats not an option on the hard drive that i have. I think its a problem that when it wasent assigned a drive letter to the 127gb part (ie it was taken that there was only one partition the entire drive).

Its really annoying me.....

SwampThing

highly unlikely - could be something to do with partiton types (primary / extended) on the drive. Did you assign the 127GB as primary? Maybe you could try re-attaching it internally and check the partiton table with fdisk. If the 20GB extra space was allocated 'before' the 127GB partiton, that could be an issue.

Stab in the dark really.

RicardoSmith

You formatted it on 1 PC which saw it as 160. Then plugged it into a 2nd PC which could only see 127? Then copied stuff to it on the 2nd PC? I wonder what that has done. Probably screwed the parition table. If a drive is shown as the wrong size you shouldn't try to use it.

Tenshot

I'm guessing your external casing is a Firewire case, and not a terribly new one?

The standard IDE->Firewire chipset used in most external Firewire cases a couple of years ago couldn't handle LBA48 addressing, so drive sizes got truncated, or worse. Under no circumstances should you write anything to the drive when attached like that.

Assuming this is your problem, you can retrieve your original data by connecting it directly to an internal IDE cable again. If you want to use it as a permanent external drive, you'll need to upgrade to a newer case and keep the older one for drives of 120 GB or less.

Col_Loki

You formatted it on 1 PC which saw it as 160. Then plugged it into a 2nd PC which could only see 127? Then copied stuff to it on the 2nd PC? I wonder what that has done. Probably screwed the parition table. If a drive is shown as the wrong size you shouldn't try to use it.

Yea i know, was stuck as i was formatting another computer (removing Raid Array).

Its definetly nothing to do with the H.D Case thats brand new, and the PC im using to connect to it should see all the 160gb . Any software or anything that might help?

lol, seemed like a good idea at the time!!

Tenshot

Have you reattached it to the second PC yet (the one that could see only 127 GB originally)? That's probably your best bet for getting the data off.

Here's a handy disk recovery tool that can find data even when the partitions are messed up; worth a try if all else fails:

http://www.woundedmoon.org/win32/driverescue19d.html

Also, your external drive case may well be an old model, even if you just bought it new. Any chance you could try another > 128 GB drive in it for comparison?

Col_Loki

I formatted the 20gb section seperatly so its the only partition showing up on either computer / with or without the caddy. The Case works perfectly with another 180gb drive so its not the problem.

Think ill try the recovery program, cheers for the reply's guys much appreciated.