Hard Drive Changed to Slave, Now Must be Formatted?

[XMenFreek118]

Okay, this is really confusing to me, but I don't think I'm completely helpless.

My problem is that I have a WD hard drive that was originally set to slave, and a small 5GB set to master. Then I was going to install Windows XP on a new partition on my 80GB (the WD) hard drive with partition magic 8, but for some reason decided to change the WD to master.

After I did that, I booted from my 5GB hard drive with Windows XP, and the Western Digital didn't show up. So I changed it back to slave, and the 5G to master again.

Now Windows recognizes the disk but says it has not been formatted. I DO NOT want to format it, and have tried chkdsk and mbrfix (although I'm not sure if I used them correctly), and still XP tells me that I have to format it.

What do I do to get this back? This should have a simple explanation.

 

[saikee]

If you have a 5Gb master and a 80Gb slave the only way both run is a 80Gb master with a 5Gb slave.

You cannot have both as masters in the same ribbon cable. The bios will disable one of them in order to run because it would have no idea which one it should boot first.

If you have two IDE channels the two master can run if two separate ribbon cables are provided. The primary IDE channel master boots ahead of the secondary IDE channel master.

Above is just the hard ware connection. Now the software problem.

You will find XP installer dislikes another copy of itself in the same PC. XP is currently in a C drive in the 5Gb. If you use 80Gb as the master then a new XP installation is needed while the old XP in the 5Gb will not boot because it is in a "D" drive.

The logical way is to migrate the XP in 5Gb to the 80Gb disk. There are several ways to achieve it. The following link is one of the free alternatives

http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=149328

You can runs two XP (maximum 8 XP for the two disks) if you use a Linux boot loader. The problem is to install them.

 

[XMenFreek118]

It's not that I have two masters running (I forgot to mention that I made the 5GB a slave after changing the 80GB to master), it's that I can't access my hard drive after changing it from slave, to master, to slave again. I understand how migrating the xp from the 5 to the 80 could help, but all I need help with doing is being able to avoid formatting my 80Gb hard drive and being able to access the files off of my it.

I'm running off of the xp installation in the 5gb, and the 80g doesn't have an installation of windows. Is there a way I could install windows on the 80g without deleting my files?

 

[Freestone]

Not sure why going from slave to master to slave should cause a partition to appear unformatted unless Partition Magic did something. You may have to resort to partition repair utilities or data recovery tools.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

http://www.ptdd.com/

http://www.partition-recovery.com/

http://www.runtime.org/

 

[XMenFreek118]

Also, could windows tell me I have to format it if the jumpers aren't set up right? For example, if I have the 5GB jumpers set up right and the 80GB jumpers set up wrong?

 

[Freestone]

If BIOS is seeing your 80GB drive properly then chances are the jumpers are correct. What make and model is the drive? With that info we can confirm drive jumpering.

What does Disk Management see? (Start, Run, diskmgmt.msc)

 

[XMenFreek118]

The Western Digital (80G) is a WD800-JB, and Disk Management says that it is healthy and active, although it says it has 74.53 GB of free space and its capacity is 74.53 GB. If I check my computer, it obviously tells me to format it, but Properties tells me the file system is RAW and I have 0bytes of free space and 0bytes of used space...

 

[saikee]

Partition Magic is called Partition Tragic by many users who use it. It may be an unfair comment but I happen to agree especially if you use an old version.

The other area to look at is I believe WD has two settings for a Master. One for it in the presence of a slave and another without a slave.

 

[jurgen36]

I actually had many many problems with partition magic. After using it drives would not boot or had to be reformatted. Finally I removed all copies of PM from my system so that I was not even tempted to use it. By the way you can have 2 or even 3 copies of xp pro in your system. I actually have 3 independent copy's on 3 individual raid systems. At first I selected the boot drive in cmoss, then I rewrote the boot.ini file and now select which drive to boot on boot up. Works very well indeed. I have now two raid 5 arrays and one raid 0 array on the system. This is done for a multi backup purpose. But just the same I can boot from each individual array. Even if all the others are disconnected.
Regards

Jurgen

 

[XMenFreek118]

I used Easesus' data recovery wizard and it found ALL of my files. The only problem is that it tells me I can't recover Compressed or encrypted files. I unchecked all of the compressed zip, cab, and other files, but I don't know anything about encrypted files. I tried to recover just one mp3 file and it still told me that it can't recover compressed or encrypted files. Are all my files encrypted? All my options are when it tells me that is "ok" and "help". "Help" is no help.

 

[Freestone]

GetDataBack has had many favorable reviews regarding data recovery. I suspect your drive was formatted NTFS so make sure you select the correct version to try. It has a try before you buy option. Maybe it'll be a little more helpful with the files Easeus is having problems with?

http://www.runtime.org/

 

[XMenFreek118]

GetDataBack has also found ALL my files, but I think there is a bug in my OS, because every time I try to save a folder to a certain location, I get an error and it shuts down. Could this be because I'm trying to save it to a Network place? If so, how can I do this?

 

[XMenFreek118]

I finally got everything back to normal with GetDataBack and now I HAVE BACKUPS for my information from now on. I still plan on making another partition for my 80G drive and putting windows on that, then having my 5G be for other backup. Is there a safe way to switch the master and slave without losing my data like I went through at first? My ideal setup is:

-80G Partitioned into two parts>
-15G for Windows XP
-65G for storage

-5G One partition for anything additional I need to back up. I'm going to try using Partition Magic again to make a partition of my 80gig and install windows on it. Any suggestions?

 

[Freestone]

I would leave the 5GB totally out of the system while making the 80GB Master and perfoming the partitioning and OS installation. You have to remember that since the 5GB is bootable, its partition will be marked as Active, as will be the new 15GB partition you are planning to create. No reason to complicate matters, especially with such a tiny drive by today's standards.

I am still curious if the original partition that was lost was formatted NTFS. I am betting it was.

 

[XMenFreek118]

Yes, it was NTFS, forgot to mention that :]