Partitioning and SATA/IDE problems

[bmoremu]

I am extremely frustrated by the problems I'm having with my hard drives. Any help is much appreciated!

I have an almost year old Dell XPS. Tried partitioning my 120gb SATA HD and the software f'ed it up! My partition with my data is still there but I have no way of accessing it. I figured my only choice was to put in a 2nd HD and see if I can access my data on the f'ed up HD with recovery software...hopefully. I did a fresh install of XP on an older IDE drive, popped it in the Dell and BIOS won't recognize it...BUT, the XP setup disk does. However, this does not help because I can not boot into XP nonetheless. I even disconnected the f'ed up SATA HD but still can't boot or have BIOS recognize the IDE. All I want to do is somehow save some of the data which still exists in a partition on the f'ed up HD. I seem to be running in circles, thanks for taking the time to try and help!

 

[wolluf]

Just getting facts straight - the 120GB SATA drive was the only drive in the Dell? (with operating system on?)

Were you trying to reorganise the partitions with something like Partition Magic?

Presume you haven't got another SATA capable machine you could connect the drive to.

Why did you install XP on another machine - not a good idea if you want it to work on the Dell! Seems odd the Dell's bios is not recognising it - especially as you say XP setup disk does! (so you have tried set up/repair/recovery console on the Dell). Its jumpered/conected correctly? Do CD/DVD IDE drives get recognised by the Dell? Have you any other drives you could use?

Perhaps you'd like to clarify what you have done and why, as you can see I'm a bit confused.

btw - you might offend some with your repeated use of f'ed up.

 

[bmoremu]

Sorry, f'ed up stands for fracked up.

The 120GB was the only drive in the dell w/ factory intalled XP. I tried creating a 2nd partitiong with PartitionExpert from Acronis (possibly my first mistake). I do not have another SATA capable machine with me. I installed XP on another machine in hopes of taking on that HD (IDE), putting it in the Dell and running some kind of data recovery software. BIOS does not recognize the IDE, but XP setup CD does when I boot with it. I've tried IDE jumper settings of master, slave, cs. Seems like the partitioning messed up the BIOS? The DVD/CD drives connected to the other IDE port are recognized fine.

 

[wolluf]

So have you:-

1. Tried connecting the IDE drive to the other connector (currently used by DVD/CD drives)?

2. Tried installing XP on the IDE drive anyway - as XP install disk recognises it? Presume it would do the first part (partitioning/selecting install partition & copying setup files) ok, but there might be a problem with it booting for the next phase, if bios not recognising drive. You might be able to overcome this by (make sure you install onto a Fat32 partition) booting from a win98 boot floppy, and then copying the files boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com from the hard drive to a clean floppy. Then boot with said clean floppy (floppy will boot - and hopefully it will 'see' the hard drive & boot it). If this works, will need to repeat the exercise after final reboot (as boot.ini on hard drive will have been rebuilt for normal boot - ie, something like:-

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

(I can't remember the temp entry it uses during the install off top of my head).

Am still perplexed about hard drive - you have 'turned it on' in the bios (ie, its not set to 'no drive' - that would explain why bios not seeing it & XP is - XP basically ignores bios)