Lost access to files on Hard Drive!!...Help?? 1

[CYCOLEMAN]

I recently upgraded my motherboard, I plugged the drives back in and Windows wouldnt see my second hard drive. I accessed the Administration tools/Computer Management/Disk Management section... I could see my second drive in there and it showed all the partitions but the file system was showing as unknown and none were assigned drive letters. So I assigned them all letters and then went into my computer to see if they were there.. They were!! I thought I had success until I trield to access one of the drive letters and it says "Drive is unfomatted, would I like to format it now?" Well Obviously I said no as I have loads of stuff on this hard drive... Any ideas how I can get to these files on the drive and get them off? Or perhaps to get the drive back in working order? Im running Win 2k Pro, The drive is a Maxtor model: 91741u4 It says in disk management Disk 1, Basic, 28.70gig, Online - 3.13gig, Unallocated - D:3.13gig Healthy - F:3.13gig Healthy - G:7.40gig Healthy - H:11.93gig Healthy. The drives used to be labelled Drive E, Foxtrot, Golf and Hotel. I am currently running a program called Stellar Phoneix FAT Version (Which I beleive was the previous file system) and it is scanning for logical drives as we speak.. I really cant lose this data on this drive so any help would be greatly appreciated.
For the benefit of people doing searches on the internet with the same problem as me the following text: Files Lost No file system on used drive Cant access files on Hard Drive. Files on Hard drive now inaccessible?

 

[wolluf]

The rest of windows is ok? (often problems with motherboard change, because of all the drivers needing updating - your problem almost certainly due to this, not to the drive).

Have you tried this. Disconnect the 'problem' drive and boot into windows with only the primary. Close down, reconnect the second drive and restart. Windows should now re-detect the second drive - and hopefully will now recognise the partitions on it.

You could try a repair.

 

[Dobelly]

Cycoleman,,
I have a similar problem and was wandering how you came out with yor drive problem

 

[snipe35]

I have had this problem and was able to recover the files with a freeware program called PC Investigator

http://www.webattack.com/get/pcinspector.shtml

it has worked for me everytime....Hope this helps

 

[Edent]

I had (and have a new)a similar problem using XPhome - bringing in my old drive that had 2 partitions. I had access to one partition but not another (formerly c and d). The message was 'access denied'.

The soloution to that was to restart in safe mode (f8)? when starting up, then log in as 'administrator' (not just my usual personalized account with administrator privilages), then right click on the indignant drive and go to security- where i could then finally make access changes- adding users and permissions. That worked- and i hope it does for you too.

My new problem is with another drive from the same older machine- xp can see that there is a drive, but wants to reformat. I'll try snipe35's software and cross my fingers.