Corrupt Hard Drive.
Hey guys, one for the computer techs out there that may be able to help.
i have two internal hard drives in my computer. one (80 gigs) is used as my main where i install windows xp, and the other (300 Gigs) is used as storage. I recently reformatted the main one and re-installed xp, and now windows wont go into my storage drive, comes up with the following message: "the disk in the drive is not formatted, format now?" how can i fix this without using a program to recover all my 300 gig of data onto another hard drive. cheers |
Have you installed XP service pack 2 on your fresh install.
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nope
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do it - all your data will appear.
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ok downloading service pack 2 now, will be about 2 hours (266 mb).
will see how its goes. cheers, hope it works. its happened to me before, i've had to borrow a mates external and spend 2 days recovering 300 gigs worth. cbf this time. |
disconnect your drives before reinstalling
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Ok what may have happened prior to you re-installing Windows is you had 2 drives, both either FAT32 or both NTFS format. When you reinstall XP you are given a choice of what type of file system to use. If you didn't know what type and chose randomly there is a chance you now have 1 drive with FAT and the other with NTFS. When this happens the operating system won't be able to read the storage drive. Go the C drive, right click and go Properties, it will state what File System it is. You now have 3 options, reinstall XP and choose the other FS, try and convert your storage drive to same as OS or remove drive and plug into a spare/mates PC copy all data off, reformat to same as OS and then copy back on. If u are not that technical go for option 1.
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Have you done anything internally to the computer?
Does the hard drive appear in Disk Management (Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management)? Can you just make it active in there? |
Thboth drives are/were NTFS.
when i go into disk management, this is what i get: [img]http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/1192/17138651vm4.jpg[/img] My storage drive (X) is 300 gigs but it shows up as 128 now? |
Ok with NTFS (SP1) it will only support 128GB, hence the reason why yours is saying exactly 128. Sp2 supports up to 2TB. But you said you had installed SP2? But anyway it's not a coincidence that your drive is reportinng exactly 128gb so firstly let me know if u have SP2 or not.
And you can see that it's a Windows issue by going into BIOS and it should correctly report the 300gb. |
The disk has unused space.. it is partitioned. Resize the partition with Partition Magic or similar.
Careful though, you can lose yout data if you can't work PM |
[QUOTE=Josh]The disk has unused space.. it is partitioned. Resize the partition with Partition Magic or similar.
Careful though, you can lose yout data if you can't work PM[/QUOTE] I saw that, but also noticed it didn't have a File System associated with it. i would have thought Disk manager would have picked up that it was either Fat or NTFS. |
[QUOTE=perthzed]Ok with NTFS (SP1) it will only support 128GB, hence the reason why yours is saying exactly 128. Sp2 supports up to 2TB. But you said you had installed SP2? But anyway it's not a coincidence that your drive is reportinng exactly 128gb so firstly let me know if u have SP2 or not.
And you can see that it's a Windows issue by going into BIOS and it should correctly report the 300gb.[/QUOTE] Ive installed service pack 2 yesterday so im suprised it still says 128 GB. But using active@ undelete, it shows that its a 300gig drive and shows all my data. about 95% of the drive is used so there is little unused space. |
If I were you and you want to keep your data, I'd use your Undelete application and restore it. Tools like Partition Magic
will probably sort it out, but if u don't know what you're doing and get it wrong, it can fuck both drives. I have a similar setup at home, 2 drives, 1 for storage, but also an external one for backup. So you might want to get one, they are pretty cheap at the moment and u will have a lot less hassle in the future. Another thing u might want to try, is go to hard drive manufacture's website and go to either Support or Downloads and see if they have a tool/app for your hard drive. |
would it help my cause if i disconnected the storage drive, re-installed windows and connected the drive again, or is that too late now?
i think most likely i will have to restore. |
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