Slave drive not recognized by explorer

[bhillyer]

Hello everyone.
I had my original windows install act up badly. (DNS not working and then boot.ini screwed up) So i bought a new SATA HDD (Maxtor 300GB) and reinstalled windows xp. No problems there(had to install the drivers at first with F6.
I needed to attatch my old ATA hdd as a slave so I can transfer files. I have it hooked up as Secondary storage. It shows up in BIOS just fine and in Disc management as a healthy-running hard drive. It shows up as Drive 0 though with no drive letter. It shows a partition of 115gb. But I just can't access it. I have Rescanned drives and restarted but nothing works. When I right-click it in DM I can only get it to light up Delete Partition. Both drives are using Windows native format NTFS format. I have tried to use Knoppix and Linspire but they won't transfer data between the drives. (they do see the files and play and read them just fine though)
I don't want to lose anything. So what can I do?

Thank you for any and all help.

Brent

 

[G0AOZ]

If the drive is showing in Disk Management but not My Computer or Explorer, then probably all you need to do is allocate it a drive letter. You can do this from Disk Management - right click on the relevant drive and select appropriate option to add a drive letter.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[bhillyer]

I do right click the drive under disc management and it only gives me 2 options to choose. Delete Partition and Properties. The rest are really lite and con not be selected. Any ideas as to why?

 

[G0AOZ]

It sounds like the partition might be partially corrupted. If you need to lift off data on that drive, then I'd say you probably need to use a utility like GetBackData or Easy Recovery Professional. Using any other facility might jeopardise your chances of data recovery...

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[bhillyer]

I'll give GetDataBack a try. Thank you gor your help.

 

[arpad9]

Actually, I'm having the exact same problem. Did exactly the same thing except that my new drive/install was as a result of a new computer.

I don't think that the problem is corruption because I just reinstalled Windows to fix an annoying Outlook problem.

The point is that I had the same problem with the first install but got the drive working somehow... but I don't know how. I was trying a number of things at once and didn't bother to keep track (didn't think I'd ever need to know again) but the drive eventually showed up and worked.

So here I am, stuck again with a drive that is seen but? Not recognized as NTFS? Don't know. Don't get it.

 

[Freestone]

Did you use a program called GoBack prior to the reinstall?

 

[arpad9]

I used GoBack. But I used it on my C: drive. The drive I'm having problems with has always been a secondary (non-O/S) drive.

I had the entire Symantec suite installed: Internet Security, Anti-Virus, Anti-Spam... I'll be really upset if GoBack played a role because I've already attributed a number of problems to the Norton (Symantec) apps (and didn't reinstall them this time).

Incidentally, I downloaded something called GetDataBack for NTFS and it's finding things. Unfortunately, it also had about 50 I/O errors in one section of the drive. I don't know what that's about yet because it's still scanning.

I still don't understand how the drive was working fine just before I re-installed this second time. Hmm. Maybe it wasn't and I didn't realize it because it just had intermittent I/O errors??

 

[Freestone]

As I understand GoBack, it applies itself to all installed drives.

From a command prompt you can use Diskpart to tell the partition type. I am assuming there is only 1 NTFS partition on the secondary drive:

from a command prompt enter: DISKPART
(following are diskpart commands)
SELECT DISK 1
SELECT PARTITION 1
DETAIL PARTITION
EXIT

The piece of information that is of interest is the Type. If it is listed as type 44, it is a GoBack partition and is the reason XP doesn't recognize it.

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html

 

[arpad9]

Things are becoming more clear to me now.

Yes, GoBack Fubar'd my partition. The reason the partition became visible after my first install is that I re-installed GoBack at that time. Bastards.

I don't know about the I/O errors but I'll write that off as an anomoly for now.

Before I read the above post about GoBack I was able to restore my MBR using DSKPART (from MS Support Tools for XP:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=838079

referring to the NTFS article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q153973

) and the partition is now visible but the volume still is not.

Sigh. I really hate to have to re-install GoBack to get this drive working again. I now officially hate Symantec.

 

[arpad9]

Above, I said DSKPART when I meant DSKPROBE

 

[Freestone]

I don't have firsthand experience with GoBack, so can't help you much. I just know about it "hiding" partitions from XP.

Is there any type of GoBack boot floppy or some such that will allow you to remove its changes to the partition type and the partition itself? If not, then perhaps you could use some disk imaging software, image your boot drive, reinstall GoBack, fix your secondary drive by removal of GoBack, then restore your image. No GoBack remnants then. The alternative would be to install GoBack, perform the repair, then remove it.

But, since you've altered the partition table with Disk Probe, are reinstalling and/or removing GoBack viable options? You may want to look into backing up your secondary drive before doing any further changes.