Hard Drive will not show up in Explorer

[SpokaneTJ]

I have a hard drive in with the MBR went south on. Not wanting to destroy the data that is already on there, I put a new HDD in the computer and installed XP on it. I figured I would just slave the old HDD and retrieve the information I needed off the drive. This isn't happening. The BIOS see's the drive, XP's disk managagement sees the drive, although it will not let me do anything except for remove partition. The drive will not show up in windows explorer. I even tried connecting my drive to my laptop with the same results. It knows it is there, it just won't display the drive. I am at an impass at the moment, any thoughts??? Thanks

 

[braddds]

http://www.ntfs.com/mbr-damaged.htm

the above site has info on mbr recovery. You can also google fix mbr for more info and instructions.

Cheers

 

[SpokaneTJ]

Thanks for the link. Although when I did go into FDISK to check on it, I only saw the primary disk, it didn't show the slave. I am going to try and see if just using the bad disk will allow it to show up in fdisk

 

[wolluf]

How did the mbr get to 'go south'? Boot virus? Have you tried fdisk with just the 'bad' drive connected? Have you tried a simple fdisk /mbr with the bad drive connected on its own?

If disk management sees a partition on the drive, suggests the partition table is still there (and also suggests fdisk should see it).

Have you tried any data recovery apps while its slaved to XP system?

 

[Rufusman]

Are you sure that it is a problem with the MBR?

If Fdisk does not see it, it may be a damaged HDD.

Try downloading software like easy recovery (

http://www.ontrack.com/Homepage.aspx?id=3&pagename=Software)

or if this does not work, try

http://www.pcbsearch.com.au.

YOu send the drive to them. It costs nothing for them to have a look at the drive, and they charge a flat rate if it is recoverable.