HD Detection

[Hans]

I don't know how to describe this perfectly... I'll do my
best in explaining, please bear with me.

I have 2 hard drives, a primary and a slave one of
course. For some reason this morning, the primary was
turned from drive C to drive G; the slave was turned from
drive D to drive H.

What I did was to disconnect all drives except for the
primary drive and booted the system. But I wasn't able to
boot anymore, I can however view the files via systems
recovery of the windows xp cd.

So what I did was to change the jumpers of both primary
and slave drives to make my old drive C a drive D and vice
versa. Then I installed a fresh windows xp on the new
drive C, it worked smoothly.

Afterwards, I connected my old drive C with the intention
of converting it into drive D. Windows has detected the
drive yet there's no drive D icon. But according to the
device manager, the drive is working perfectly. I also
used administrative tools to check the drive,
it's "online" and identified as "basic" and "active". It
even stated I have 74% free (I didn't reformat the drive).

Despite its proof of presence in my pc, no drive letter
was assigned to it. I was trying to assign one with the
said tool but upon right-clicking, the only "clickable"
option is delete partition and help!

Getting desperate, I tried rebooting and load the windows
xp pro cd again. Hoping to have another shot at the
systems recovery to regain my documents. Funny thing is I
was able to access it through SR and the drive was
assigned as drive D. I can view the files yet can't copy
the content of documents and settings because access is
denied (in spite of my administrator privilege of my OWN
pc grrr). In the SR environment, I can only
add/delete/view files within the root directory of drive D
and the old windows directory. I also tried safe mode
hoping I can access my files.

Please, can someone help me how I can assign a drive
letter? Or how can I access my files? I'm really
desperate and don't want to reformat it soon until all
possibilities have been tried.

Any help and suggestion is appreciated, thanks!

 

[Guest]

Hi

Michael Solomon MS-MVP Wrote

If you are able to boot as you say but are not able to access some files i
might be a file ownership issue
Note, file ownership and permissions supersede administrator rights. Ho
you resolve it depends upon which version of XP you are running


***********XP-Home***********


Unfortunately, XP Home using NTFS is essentially hard wired for "Simple Fil
Sharing" at system level

However, you can set XP Home permissions in Safe Mode. Reboot, and star
hitting F8, a menu should eventually appear and one of th
options is Safe Mode. Select it. Note, it will ask for the administrator'
password. This is not your administrator account, rather it is th
machine's administrator account for which users are asked to create
password during setup

If you created no such password, when requested, leave blank and pres
enter

Open Explorer, go to Tools and Folder Options, on the view tab, scroll t
the bottom of the list, if it shows "Enable Simple File Sharing" deselect i
and click apply and ok. If it shows nothing or won't let you make a change
move on to the next step

Navigate to the files, right click, select properties, go to the Securit
tab, click advanced, go to the Owner tab and select the user that was logge
on when you were refused permission to access the files. Click apply an
ok. Close the properties box, reopen it, click add and type in the name o
the user you just enabled. If you wish to set ownership for everything i
the folder, at the bottom of the Owner tab is the following selection
"Replace owner on subcontainers and objects," select it as well

Once complete, you should be able to do what you wish with these files whe
you log back on as that user


**********XP-Pro************


If you have XP Pro, temporarily change the limited account t
administrative. First, go to Windows Explorer, go to Tools, select Folde
Options, go to the View tab and be sure "Use Simple File Sharing" is no
selected. If it is, deselect it and click apply and ok


If you wish everything in a specific folder to be accessible to a user
right click the folder, select properties, go to the Security tab, clic
Advanced, go to the Owner tab
select the user you wish to have access, at the bottom of the box, yo
should see a check box for "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects,
place a check in the box and click apply and ok

The user should now be able to perform necessary functions on files in th
folder even as a limited account. If not, make it an admin account again
right click the folder, select Properties, go to the Security tab and b
sure the user is listed in the user list. If not, click add and type th
user name in the appropriate box, be sure the user has all the necessar
permissions checked in the permission list below the user list, click appl
and ok

That should do it and allow whatever access you desire for that folder eve
in a limited account

After you have successfully gained access to the all the data files of your old Hdd, copy all the files to the C drive and then you can re-format the slave drive

Hope it helps

Pete


----- Hans wrote: ----

I don't know how to describe this perfectly... I'll do my
best in explaining, please bear with me

I have 2 hard drives, a primary and a slave one of
course. For some reason this morning, the primary was
turned from drive C to drive G; the slave was turned from
drive D to drive H

What I did was to disconnect all drives except for the
primary drive and booted the system. But I wasn't able to
boot anymore, I can however view the files via systems
recovery of the windows xp cd

So what I did was to change the jumpers of both primary
and slave drives to make my old drive C a drive D and vice
versa. Then I installed a fresh windows xp on the new
drive C, it worked smoothly

Afterwards, I connected my old drive C with the intention
of converting it into drive D. Windows has detected the
drive yet there's no drive D icon. But according to the
device manager, the drive is working perfectly. I also
used administrative tools to check the drive,
it's "online" and identified as "basic" and "active". It
even stated I have 74% free (I didn't reformat the drive).

Despite its proof of presence in my pc, no drive letter
was assigned to it. I was trying to assign one with the
said tool but upon right-clicking, the only "clickable"
option is delete partition and help!

Getting desperate, I tried rebooting and load the windows
xp pro cd again. Hoping to have another shot at the
systems recovery to regain my documents. Funny thing is I
was able to access it through SR and the drive was
assigned as drive D. I can view the files yet can't copy
the content of documents and settings because access is
denied (in spite of my administrator privilege of my OWN
pc grrr). In the SR environment, I can only
add/delete/view files within the root directory of drive D
and the old windows directory. I also tried safe mode
hoping I can access my files.

Please, can someone help me how I can assign a drive
letter? Or how can I access my files? I'm really
desperate and don't want to reformat it soon until all
possibilities have been tried.

Any help and suggestion is appreciated, thanks!

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply and information, Peter.

My main problem is there's no drive being assigned to it,
so I wasn't able to right click on any folder of my drive
D as intructed in your reply.

I also tried to install another windows xp on drive D,
windows said it has a partition of 76gb and an 8mb
unpartitioned space. Very logical since it already has an
old windows xp in it. Upon selecting the partition where
I intended to install windows, there was a message saying
the selected partition is not recognized.

I'm really confused, it's not recognized yet using system
recovery I can access the files. I was thinking if
there's anyway I can access the files using systems
recovery only. I don't have the luxury of transfering the
hard drive to another PC as I only have 1 PC at home

BTW, I am using xp pro.