I hope this can be fixed. I disconnected my hard drive to hook up my brothers drive to my pc. After I was done I reconnected my drive and it shows it there and working but when I click on it to access the files on it it says the drive is not formatted do you want to format it now. I have alot of files on that drive and was wondering what is going on with it ?? It's a 60 gig western digital. Thanx for the help
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Drive Failure
- Thread starter DarkLogan
- Start date
More info please.
O/s - xp?
filestore - ntfs/fat32?
this was slave drive?
how old is machine? (eg, is it pre 1999)
you literally just disconnected it, connnected your brother's, did what?, disconnected that and reconnected yours?
Any other changes to hardware/software in this period?
Is Norton goback installed?
No problems accessing your brother's drive?
O/s - xp?
filestore - ntfs/fat32?
this was slave drive?
how old is machine? (eg, is it pre 1999)
you literally just disconnected it, connnected your brother's, did what?, disconnected that and reconnected yours?
Any other changes to hardware/software in this period?
Is Norton goback installed?
No problems accessing your brother's drive?
- Thread starter
- #3
OS=Windows XP Pro
Filestore On That Drive=Fat32
It's a Slave Drive
Machine Is 2002 Gateway but the drive (60 gig) is only a year old
What I did was I unplugged the cables from my drive to test my brothers drive for him. My drive was working fine.
Then when I pluged my drive back in windows did its thing and said it found new drive (blah blah) and then when I clicked on the drive in windows explorer a prompt came up asking me if I want to format the drive. The answer to that is NO I have alot of files on that drive but now I cant get to them. Please tell me I don't have to format it. I will lose everything on it and that will stink.
Filestore On That Drive=Fat32
It's a Slave Drive
Machine Is 2002 Gateway but the drive (60 gig) is only a year old
What I did was I unplugged the cables from my drive to test my brothers drive for him. My drive was working fine.
Then when I pluged my drive back in windows did its thing and said it found new drive (blah blah) and then when I clicked on the drive in windows explorer a prompt came up asking me if I want to format the drive. The answer to that is NO I have alot of files on that drive but now I cant get to them. Please tell me I don't have to format it. I will lose everything on it and that will stink.
I assume that when you did this switching, that the pc was powered down...
That you did not inadvertantly switch a connection...
If you find no joy at trying running diagnostics against this drive, try a different(new) IDE cable, or first triple check the proper connection for alignment, seating at the drive and at the mobo connection and so forth. After checking reseating power back up and see if there is a difference. Also on boot you can check what BIOS sees.
Hope this helps
rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all
That you did not inadvertantly switch a connection...
If you find no joy at trying running diagnostics against this drive, try a different(new) IDE cable, or first triple check the proper connection for alignment, seating at the drive and at the mobo connection and so forth. After checking reseating power back up and see if there is a difference. Also on boot you can check what BIOS sees.
Hope this helps
rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all
- Thread starter
- #6
I have changed the IDE cable to no joy. I ran the WDDiag it says there are no errors. My machine was powered down when I did the switch. I didnt remove my drive from my pc when checking my brothers drive I simply used my cables. Nothing has changed as far as settings everything is set right on the drive.
You might be looking at attempting to recover what you can from this drive. I would first run chkdsk or scandisk to see if there is a table problem. If no joy there, see if you can attach it to another pc and see the data.
Last resort a program like this can produce good results especially if the drive has not been written to:
GetDataBack is a good data recovery program to use. I recall the trial allows you to see if there is any chance before purchasing and will only allow a few files to be recovered.
If and when you get back on track, seriously consider starting a backup scheme that meets your needs.
I Hope This Helps
rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all
Last resort a program like this can produce good results especially if the drive has not been written to:
GetDataBack is a good data recovery program to use. I recall the trial allows you to see if there is any chance before purchasing and will only allow a few files to be recovered.
If and when you get back on track, seriously consider starting a backup scheme that meets your needs.
I Hope This Helps
rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all
- Thread starter
- #8
Yeah that gut feeling started kicking in about a month ago out of nowhere telling me to back that drive up but I didn't do it I guess I'll have to pay for it now unless that program works. It's reading it as I type so hopefully it helps. Thanx for your time and pointing me to a program that may help get the files back.
If the drive is fat32, then try booting from a win98 boot floppy and see if you can access the filestore from the dos prompt (this would establish if its an XP issue or a filestore problem - partition table).
btw - have you access to another machine you could slave your drive to (that's what I would do first).
Also, how was this drive partitioned in the first place? As its > 60Gb and fat32, then xp couldn't have been used to partition/format it. And xp can be funny about access to filestore it hasn't partitioned.
Another possible - installing an operating system on the drive, assuming the install for said operating system could recognise that it is a partitioned formatted drive.
btw - have you access to another machine you could slave your drive to (that's what I would do first).
Also, how was this drive partitioned in the first place? As its > 60Gb and fat32, then xp couldn't have been used to partition/format it. And xp can be funny about access to filestore it hasn't partitioned.
Another possible - installing an operating system on the drive, assuming the install for said operating system could recognise that it is a partitioned formatted drive.
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