BIOS sees drive but not Explorer

[anim]

I have two IDE drives that were working prior to tonight. I am running Win XP pro. I am having a problem where the BIOS IS seeing my slave hard drive (Seagate ST380021A), but I do not have access to it (not seen in Explorer).

Disk Management does see it, but it no longer has a Volume ID. It is no longer typed as having an NTFS file system, and from the looks of things, my 30 GB of data is gone as it is saying that I have 100% free space. It is calling both my boot HD and this one primary partitions. I do not have the option of apply a drive letter to it either.


Any thoughts on how to get things back, or what's happening?
(Sorry I cross posted this as a reply in another thread.)

 

[anim]

Oh, the "missing" HD is seen as a basic type in Disk Management.

 

[30051978]

Hi
find out that that hdd is working or not by removing the hdd of primary and connect the "Seagate ST380021A"
and try
format ti by ms dos after that it will det

 

[anim]

The problem is that I don't want to reformat the slave drive as I do have some storage files on it. I have the important stuff backed up, but there is a lot of little stuff I would like to keep.

I should mention that I had originally formatted this drive while it was hooked up to another mobo, and then bought a new processor and mobo for the system. It WAS working for the last week or so as a slave drive for storage.

It's just strange that I can see it with BIOS and actually in PC Inspector File Recovery, as a "NONAME" fixed disc. When I try to recover the files I get a "Access violation at address 004BAE4C in module 'filerecovery.exe'. Read of address 000000004" error.

 

[wolluf]

anim,

Have you another machine you can slave it to (see if any difference)?

Or you could try one of the commercial data recovery tools (like at

http://www.winternals.com),

but they obviously cost money.

 

[lkm222]

I might suggest a couple of things to consider, are they FAT, FAT32 or NTFS. The latter as I understand will have difficulty reading either of the former
Maybe I isunderstood but are both drives the same manufacturer? I once had a similar occurrence when i tried to utilize parts from an old system [win98SE and Quantum drive]behind my NEW [winXP Seagate] system

 

[gmoorhouse]

Anim,

I have the same problem. I have 3 hard drives....only my main hard drive is being assigned a drive letter.
The other two are seen in Admin tools but the computer does not give them a drive letter and the only option admin tools gives you is to delete the partition the status is listed as healthy and active. As well as you this is a storage drive for me and not keen on losing storage. Does anyone have any help?

Thanks in advance.

 

[dav7612r]

i to have the same problem with xp pro. i got a new seagate drive and made it the primary and made my western digital the slave and then did a clean install of xp, completly deleting everything on the slave before install on the master. device manager says there is nothing wrong with the slave drive but i cant access it from explorer.

 

[wolluf]

gmoorhouse - 'The other two are seen in Admin tools' - does this mean you're using 2k or XP? If so, have you tried assigning them a drive letter (using disk management - run diskmgmt.msc)? You can do this in 2k or XP.

dav7612r - was there any overlay software installed on old drive? (how was that drive set up in the first place).

 

[gmoorhouse]

dav7612r,

I installed XP under the NTFS format but I also did my storage drives in the NTFS format as well but I'm thinking that I did my two storage drives as FAT32 and the NTFS won't assign them drive letters cause the BIOS and Disk manager does see them. Your XP drive, did you do it in the NTFS format? and also do you know what format your other drives are in?

What I am going to do is reload XP under FAT32 and see if I get access to the drives then.

 

[gmoorhouse]

wolluf,

Yes, I am using XP. Under Admin Tools the only option for my two storage drives is delete partition (or format, how ever it says), I do not get a option for assigning a drive letter.

Question, if my OS is under NTFS is it able to see a FAT32 drive? I think it cannot. I thought I did my storage drives in NTFS but now I'm thinking I did under FAT32.

 

[wolluf]

XP can read/write fat32 filestore - doesn't matter what filestore its installed on. I've seen a number of posts where people have problems accessing partitions in XP where they are created by another operating system (more often FAT32). One reason is what I posted earlier - use of overlay software.

PS. You can easily check if fat32 or not - just boot from win98 boot floppy - if fat32, you will be able to see them from the dos prompt.

PPS. Are the 2 drives purely storage (ie, no operating system on either?)

 

[gmoorhouse]

Wolluf,

Yes, the 2 drives are only storage no OS has ever been loaded onto them. After work I will have to boot from the win98 disk to see if it can see those two drives. I was just looking at someone PC here at work with win2000 they have a drive that is formated ntfs with a partition of fat32, in disk admin the fat32 portion does not give you choice to assign a drive only for delete the partition.



wolluf (TechnicalUser) May 9, 2003
XP can read/write fat32 filestore - doesn't matter what filestore its installed on. I've seen a number of posts where people have problems accessing partitions in XP where they are created by another operating system (more often FAT32). One reason is what I posted earlier - use of overlay software.

PS. You can easily check if fat32 or not - just boot from win98 boot floppy - if fat32, you will be able to see them from the dos prompt.

PPS. Are the 2 drives purely storage (ie, no operating system on either?)

 

[wolluf]

I've got 2k and XP (among others) on my PC - and a fat32 partition. 2k and XP disk management give options for change drive letter for this partition - so don't understand PC at work (does user have admin privileges?)

One approach to your problem (basically not trying to find cause of problem), depending on amount of data on 2 drives could be to install XP temporarily on one of drives (without formatting of course). Then slave main and other drive to it, and copy what you want off drives to main (slaved drive). Then boot back from main and wipe other 2 drives. then copy data back (obviously only any good if data will fit on main drive (temporarily).

 

[dav7612r]

hey guy's/gal's

originaly the drive thats not being seen now had win98 and was then upgraded to xp pro. when i got the new seagate drive i just formatted both with ntfs, or atleast i think i did. in the xp install i chose to delete everything on that drive. did it just delete all files or format the drive?

 

[wolluf]

dav7612r

Xp install's partitioning tools allow you to delete, create and format partitions. So, if it had fat32 and you changed this to ntfs during the install, you must have formatted the drive (there is no option to just delete files anyway).

 

[TomCologne]

This is Microsoft's answer:

Hard Disk Does Not Appear in My Computer or in Windows Explorer

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330140

Although I doubt that Roxio's GoBack mentioned there is the only cause, it may still be helpful.

TomCologne

 

[dav7612r]

TomCologne,

I read that to. My problem started without roxio even being installed. This was right after i installed XP. Hopefully an update or something solves the problem. I've tried everything i know. I even went as far as asking the upper IT people here at work. They're all baffled by it.

 

[TomCologne]

dav7612r,

that link was actually meant to complement this thread.

My brother-in-law called yesterday because of the same problem and he doesn't have GoBack, either.

If it is any comfort, two more people working on it!?!

I'll be back,

TomCologne

 

[Diskbutchr]

Encountered the same problem. XP Home and a Western Digital 40G. Shows up in the bios and in the device manager (this device is working properly my ass!) but not in Explorer. Never owned GoBack and this is a new drive. No data on the drive. How do I format what I can't see?