second hard drive problems

  • Thread starter Thread starter Machew
  • Start date Start date
M

Machew

ive had two hard drives in my pc for a year now and they worked fin
untill i went away and my nephew stayed at mine managed to infect m
main hd,second one was still working. i reformated my main one and no
i cant access my second one, it shows up in the hardware profiles bu
wont let me get to it, help!. i really dont want to format my second h
as it has a lot of stuff on i dont want to lose
 
Machew said:
ive had two hard drives in my pc for a year now and they worked fine
untill i went away and my nephew stayed at mine managed to infect my
main hd,second one was still working. i reformated my main one and now
i cant access my second one, it shows up in the hardware profiles but
wont let me get to it, help!. i really dont want to format my second hd
as it has a lot of stuff on i dont want to lose.
Click to expand...

Your first step should be to examine your installed disks via
the Disk Management console. Click Start / Run, then type
diskmgmt.msc. What disks do you see?
 
You repaired your main hard drive.

Now you can't access your second one, it shows up in the hardware profiles
but wont let you get to it?

Could you explain that please? hardware profiles? What are you referring to?
Where is this located?
Does HD show up in My Computer?
Does HD show up in computer BIOS?
You can't get to it? Expalin!

What is your configuration? Master slave etc.
Could you post your boot.ini file listings?
 
Dixonian69 said:
You repaired your main hard drive.

Now you can't access your second one, it shows up in the hardware
profiles
but wont let you get to it?

Could you explain that please? hardware profiles? What are you
referring to?
Where is this located?
Does HD show up in My Computer?
Does HD show up in computer BIOS?
You can't get to it? Expalin!

What is your configuration? Master slave etc.
Could you post your boot.ini file listings?

--
Dennis S.
I''m from Illinois. I hope I helped you. Good Luck.


:


ive had two hard drives in my pc for a year now and they worked fine
untill i went away and my nephew stayed at mine managed to infect my
main hd,second one was still working. i reformated my main one and
now
i cant access my second one, it shows up in the hardware profiles but
wont let me get to it, help!. i really dont want to format my second
hd
as it has a lot of stuff on i dont want to lose.
Click to expand...

my main hard drive is 30gb Master and i have no probs on that one. my
second hd is 80gb slave, i can see it in the bios everything ok there.
when windows loads it shows nothing in my computer but when i go to
diskmgmt it says its there its healthy/active everything seems ok apart
from theres no drive letter assigned to it. When i right click the only
thing i can do is delete partition(which i really dont want to do!). if
i right click on disk 1 on the graph at the bottom of the diskmgmt
window it says i can "convert to dynamic disk" but i dont know what
that means. as for my boot.ini i've searched my Main hd and cant find
it, where should it be?
thanks to everyone whos taking the time to help me.
 
In disk management there are two panes/windows for the HDD.

Left side where it says HD(1). What does it show?
Disk Type:
Disk Size:
Disk Status:
Rt click on HD(1) A menu opens up. What is listed? I have:
Convert to Dynamic, Properties, Help
Select "Properties", Select "Volume" tab
Please Post information!!!
Disk:
Type:
Status
Partition Style:
Capacity:
Unallocated space:
Reserved space:

Right Side of HD(1)
Drive Letter: D-Z You say it's blank. Correct?
Size, File System XXX gig, FAT or NTFS
Color Blue Black Green etc.

rt click on rt pane/window What does it say?
open
explore
Mark partition as Active
Change Drive Letter
Format
Delete partition
Properties
Help

Select Explore (if available)
What happens?

Select Properties.
Pleas post info!!!


As far as boot.ini, that isn't needed until we get HD(1) issue resolved.
 
I've been in that exact situation twice, ie. the 2nd hdd has no drive
letter assigned, today being the 2nd time. After consulting my computer shop
service at the 1st incident, the only way out was to save the data from the
inaccessable disk with a recovery tool. I used File Scavenger 3 to recover
all data onto a separate disk. Then I deleted the partition and formatted
the non-letter disk. After that I assigned a letter to it again.
The good thing is that the all data is easily recoverable as it has been
impossible to overwrite the data because the drive has been inaccessable.

Can't think of any other solution. Been there twice.

Cheers
 
Uffe said:
I've been in that exact situation twice, ie. the 2nd hdd has no drive
letter assigned, today being the 2nd time. After consulting my computer shop
service at the 1st incident, the only way out was to save the data from the
inaccessable disk with a recovery tool. I used File Scavenger 3 to recover
all data onto a separate disk. Then I deleted the partition and formatted
the non-letter disk. After that I assigned a letter to it again.
The good thing is that the all data is easily recoverable as it has been
impossible to overwrite the data because the drive has been inaccessable.

Can't think of any other solution. Been there twice.

Cheers
Click to expand...

If you've been there twice, would you now consider backing up
your important data to an independent medium every week?
This is really the root cause of this type of problem: That many
PC owners thing that their data is absolutely safe when commited
to a hard disk. It is not. Important files must always be kept on
at least two independent media.
 
Pegasus (MVP) said:
If you've been there twice, would you now consider backing up
your important data to an independent medium every week?
This is really the root cause of this type of problem: That many
PC owners thing that their data is absolutely safe when commited
to a hard disk. It is not. Important files must always be kept on
at least two independent media.
Click to expand...

I quite agree with you Pegasus, and I have been using two separate hdd's for
data backup:
My crucial data were backed up on separate hdd D: used only for storage,
using Norton Ghost. It just happened that while I was reinstalling WinXP
etc. onto hdd C:, I found out that that backup drive (formerly D:) with the
Ghost files was inaccessable without a drive letter. Luckily I had/have
further backup data on a 3rd physical hdd E: to fall back on, but not as
convenient as Ghost files.
The problems started a few weeks ago when I got a new mobo (MSI K8N Diamond)
which probably was faulty and got replaced now. All in all no data has been
lost, but it's ironic it was one of the backup drives that got inaccessable.
Anyway, it's recovered now & running again, but I'm thinking of getting an
extra external USB hdd for the Ghost backups.

Cheers
 
Hi,


You should take into consderation that formatting won't completely
erase data. If your files are valuable, you do can restore tham using
data recovery tools. Among them I think Active@ undelete and Uneraser
(for DOS) have the msot powerful restore methods. I've used it before
and it never failed me so you should pay attention to theese tools.
http://www.active-undelete.com/
http://www.active-undelete.com/
 
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