Formated D drive now C drive isn't working!

[smaxted]

I had a computer where my friend wanted his D drive formated, I booted up a floppy disk checked to make sure I wasn't about to fdisk drive C, fdisked drive D then the computer said FDISK finish drive letter change..instead of letting me pick what I wanted to call drive D, I rebooted the computer and now the C drive won't boot into windows. I went into Dos to check out the C drive but when I "dir" it it said media could not be found "abort, retry, fail". and that's my problem if someone could help me out that would be greatly appreciated...thanks!

Scotty Mac a.k.a smaxted

"Another day, another problem"

 

[ski]

Start the computer with the boot floppy inserted, select 'Start without CD-ROM support', at the A:\> prompt type C: and press Enter, at the C:\> prompt type fdisk /status and press Enter, and see if anything appears on the screen.

 

[smaxted]

no, it won't work...I can't even go c:/fdisk without the computer saying Invalid Media...and so on

Scotty Mac a.k.a smaxted

"Another day, another problem"

 

[ski]

Can you get to the A:\> prompt?
If so, then type D: and see if it goes to a D:\> prompt.

 

[IslandCustom]

The C: drive may be formatted with NTFS. When you FDISK and view the partitions, for the C: drive does it say Non-DOS? That would explain why you can't boot from a DOS floppy and navigate the C: drive.

 

[comtec17]

When booting from the floppy to begin with it creates a virtual filesystem that is C: The D: drive is actually the C: drive which means you probably fdisk and formated the wrong partition.

 

[IslandCustom]

Comtec, what are you talking about? Fdisk reports the partitions accurately. In the 14 years I've been building PC's I've never had to second-guess fdisk. Please enlighten me.

 

[smah]

When booting with a win98 floppy a ramdisk is created. The drive letter assigned to the ramdisk is the next available after the hard drive partitions and before the CD rom. So as IslandCustom said - fdisk will show the correct drive letters.

 

[IslandCustom]

Thanks, smah. I thought maybe it was me. I wonder what Comtec's been vending.

 

[BillR2003]

smaxted, you say that fdisk said drive letter changed after it was finish. Did it say what the drive letter was? Perhaps the c: drive was changed to another letter. Did you run fdisk and type 4 to display partition information? Does it show both hard drives? And does it say one of them has a primary dos partion?

 

[smaxted]

I have tried all the above items and I still can't the bios to detect the hard drive as 40GB

Scotty Mac a.k.a smaxted

"Another day, another problem"

 

[SYAR2003]

Install drive overlay .
Goto the manufaturer of the drive
an download their drive utilities .
Disconnect all drives from mb.
Connect the 40GB as master ,
boot with a bootable diskette .
Then use the drive utilities .


Drive overlay can innstall as a small partition of the drive or files making it visible as a large drive and loaded by bios.
Doing FDISK /MBR on disks with overlay sw is baaad,
as the overlay sw thats loaded when bios starts is wasted
on the disk in question .


Check this out:

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...gb/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-gb;186057&ln=en-gb

And this:

http://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/printthread.php?t=9577

This:

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/rebuild_dm_ddo.html

SYAR

 

[papaw16]

hi smaxted,

Did this machine have two hard drives in it or was one drive partitioned as two drives? If it had two drives my guess is you fdisked drive c by mistake.

I hope I understand your post and that this helps, but it seems to me you might try the fdisk routine again, make the entire drive one partition (c), reboot to the floppy and format again to see if bios will recognize the entire drive.

papaw16

 

[sulumnad]

hello
When you Fdisked did you choose to change the current fixed disk to 2.
Generally you have disk 1, with a Active Primary DOS or NONDOS partition.
Disk 2 has an Extended Partition.
At the top it tells you which fixed disk your working with when you create, or delete a partition.
If you've deleted a partition and have reset since then, when you go into FDISK(from the A: of course) you view the partition information which always shows both drives, and whether or not they have afile system on them and their complete size. If it is blank or UNKNOWN then the drives partition is gone. and the size tells you which drive it is.
If there are two disks with primary partitions on them you may have to disconnect(power&data)/use one HD disk at a time and checked to see its current partition information. If C: has a primary youll want to set it active, if D: has a primary partition, delete it, and make an extended partition, you wanted it blank anyway.

If you were careful which fixed drive you were on when you partitioned. but still managed to lose the C:drive you were the victim of an unfortunate accident.

 

[sulumnad]

hello
When you Fdisked did you choose to change the current fixed disk to 2.
Generally you have disk 1, with a Active Primary DOS or NONDOS partition.
Disk 2 has an Extended Partition.
At the top it tells you which fixed disk your working with when you create, or delete a partition.
If you've deleted a partition and have reset since then, when you go into FDISK(from the A: of course) you view the partition information which always shows both drives, and whether or not they have afile system on them and their complete size. If it is blank or UNKNOWN then the drives partition is gone. and the size tells you which drive it is.
If there are two disks with primary partitions on them you may have to disconnect(power&data)/use one HD disk at a time and checked to see its current partition information. If C: has a primary youll want to set it active, if D: has a primary partition, delete it, and make an extended partition, you wanted it blank anyway.

If you were careful which fixed drive you were on when you partitioned. but still managed to lose the C:drive you were the victim of an unfortunate accident.

Marc State ITT
'There's always something to do or redo.'

 

[sulumnad]

Another thought would be to use a forensic or diskedit/recovery program to recover your FAT table or files on that disk if you haven't put a partition back on. You may still be able to get files off that drive, but if its toast its toast.I bought HexEdit for a hefty ransom before I found there are other programs that can do a decent amount of recovery work for free. Also search the threads here at teck-tips for disk or disaster or file recovery. If none of the FDisk options presented get you back your partition youll still have to reload the OS, but I would first slave it to another PC and work on saving files if possible.

Marc State ITT
'Its always something'-the short version.

 

[ceh4702]

Sounds like you Fdisked the wrong one or something. How do you know you didnt use FDISK or wrong DISK?

What I do is unplug the good drive and then format FDISK and format the other one. Otherwise you may delete the operating system.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.