HELP: Hard drive messed up

tw0nk · 26-09-2005 8:21am #1

Heya all, disaster...

I have 2 physical hard drives on my pc, the master (C:) and slave (E:). Last night I decided to wipe my master drive cos it was slowing down n stuff so i decided to put win xp pro on it instead of win xp home.

Popped cd in , rebooted, chose to format master drive completely (all partitions) and installed winxp pro on it. When winxp pro loaded up after installation my slave drive is visible but i cant enter it, it says it needs to be formatted.i went into hard drive management, disabled it, then enabled it, same story...

Installed partition magic, it says the hd is bad, cant read info.

What did I do? did i wreck the mbr on the drive or is it just taht windows is stupid and wont recognise drive?

can anyone please help? ALL my data is on the drive as I used it to back up my master before I formatted. I really need the info back, any tools out there that could help me recover as much as possible or rebuild mbr if thats whats wrong? thanks for help...

Jammer · 26-09-2005 8:24am

control panel, admin tools, computer management, disk management...thennnnn i can't remember, but theres an option to bring it into play there....damn control panel disable on this comp...

tw0nk · 26-09-2005 8:26am

Heya Jammer, thanks for post, i tried that, disabling it then enabling it again, no joy, it asks me to format it, thats why i think the mbr might be messed up, i should also add that it had a number of partitions on it, including linux partitions.

Sully · 26-09-2005 9:29am

I think he is on about the part where you can format/set up the HDD from there. Again, this PC has it blocked here to ;\ but iv a thread somewhere about a HDD and I was given instructions on what to do.. Just a matter of finding it

Kali · 26-09-2005 10:10am

Double-check your cabling... it may have come loose. Try the hard-disk in a different PC if possible, if it doesn't show up properly then you're looking at file-recovery. Theres lots of options but File Scavenger has worked great for me recently.

tw0nk · 26-09-2005 11:01am

Nope its definitely not cabling, tried it in another pc too, same story, i downloaded file scavenger kali, cheers for tip, i hope i can recover as much data as possible, its a disaster when something like this happens!

Pack3t3rroR · 26-09-2005 2:14pm

When you went to format the C: did you leave the E: plugged in? If so you made a mistake. NEVER leave 2 drives plugged in when you are doing a system install. So my advice is start over. Power off machine, plug out second HD and only leave the one you want to format and install onto. Plug out the SATA or IDE and power connector on the E: then power on the computer and format c: and install XP. When you get that done and you are in windows, install all your drivers etc and the power off the computer. Now plug in your E: and you will be sorted

tw0nk · 26-09-2005 2:19pm

Pack3t3rroR wrote:

When you went to format the C: did you leave the E: plugged in? If so you made a mistake. NEVER leave 2 drives plugged in when you are doing a system install. So my advice is start over. Power off machine, plug out second HD and only leave the one you want to format and install onto. Plug out the SATA or IDE and power connector on the E: then power on the computer and format c: and install XP. When you get that done and you are in windows, install all your drivers etc and the power off the computer. Now plug in your E: and you will be sorted

pack3t3rror I did leave it plugged in when I reinstalled the os, does this effect it? I never chose to format anything on E...

so if i plug out the E now , put in winxp cd and reformat my c, then reinstall winxp, then plug back in my hd everything should be there? but this doesnt explain why the hd doesnt work in a different computer? i tried it in another pc and that pc couldnt recognise it either...

Pack3t3rroR · 26-09-2005 2:30pm

ok mate sorry i missed where you said you tried a diff comp. Hmm what is the error you are getting? on the second machine i mean.

tw0nk · 26-09-2005 3:08pm

Pack3t3rroR wrote:

ok mate sorry i missed where you said you tried a diff comp. Hmm what is the error you are getting? on the second machine i mean.

Well it gives the same on both, the hard drive appears as a normal drive(given a letter etc in explorer) then if i click on it ,it says the drive needs to be formatted, i check in disk management too and it is enabled etc..

Pack3t3rroR · 26-09-2005 3:36pm

ok mate, give me till 6:30pm, i dont finish work till 6pm and i have come across this problem before so i no it can be fixed. I will find you the fix when i get home.

tw0nk · 26-09-2005 3:39pm

Pack3t3rroR wrote:

ok mate, give me till 6:30pm, i dont finish work till 6pm and i have come across this problem before so i no it can be fixed. I will find you the fix when i get home.

Ok pack3t3rror, thanks a million for your help, im finished work at 5:30 so i wont be able to check your response til tomorrow so no rush for tonight, thanks again.

Pack3t3rroR · 27-09-2005 9:07am

Ok i need to know have you ever used partition magic 8?

tw0nk · 27-09-2005 9:09am

Pack3t3rroR wrote:

Ok i need to know have you ever used partition magic 8?

Yup ive used partition magic before, tried using it to fix my prob, no joy....

Pack3t3rroR · 27-09-2005 9:17am

Ok mate tell me, when you use partition magic 8 does it see your hard drive? and also how much space do you have left roughly on that second hard drive?

tw0nk · 27-09-2005 9:19am

Pack3t3rroR wrote:

Ok mate tell me, when you use partition magic 8 does it see your hard drive? and also how much space do you have left roughly on that second hard drive?

It recognises hd, but it doesnt allow access or anything except formatting to be done with it. it says raw as type, not sure how much space is left, little or none ide say, maybe 8 gigs out of 160 gigs.

Pack3t3rroR · 27-09-2005 9:25am

What is was going to say was to create a 1 GB partition on that harddrive, and format the 1GB then when u restart windows should pick up the HD. Do you have service pack 2 installed? The creation and formating of a 1GB partition should work but if not i am in the middle of writing another way to get round it, only its very long winded.

EDIT: the creation and format of a small partition fixed a prob like this before.

tw0nk · 27-09-2005 9:28am

Pack3t3rroR wrote:

What is was going to say was to create a 1 GB partition on that harddrive, and format the 1GB then when u restart windows should pick up the HD. Do you have service pack 2 installed? The creation and formating of a 1GB partition should work but if not i am in the middle of writing another way to get round it, only its very long winded.

EDIT: the creation and format of a small partition fixed a prob like this before.

I tried that too, i think ive tried every solution on the net! hehe, i got a program last night called file scavenger and that lets me copy all my files to another drive so i think im gonna just copy all my data over, format drive to ntfs and then copy all the files back, what ya think ? oh and thanks a million for all the help..

Pack3t3rroR · 27-09-2005 9:37am

Have you tried that program before? Or have you got a chance to even test it yet? Can it see your files? Also what FAT Tables are you using? Is C:\ NTFS and E: FAT32? or are they both NTFS?

Dont worry about the help, your welcome, i know how much of a pain this is, happened me before

tw0nk · 27-09-2005 9:41am

Yup i used it last night and found all my files, and it allows me to copy them over, it just takes a long while to do it, prolly over night for the 160 gigs, not too bad though i spose.

Pack3t3rroR · 27-09-2005 9:45am

Oh i like the sound of that program. But it just proves that there really is nothing wrong with the HD, i mean the files are all there and they are all accessible. Please let me know if it all works ok.

tw0nk · 27-09-2005 9:47am

I will do, and thanks for all your help, btw , i blame windows for all this! hehe, a bad workman always blames his tools!

HELP: Hard drive messed up

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