Hey guys,

It seems my harddrive has formatted itself. I had to reboot my computer and noticed that windows was showing my 200gb seagate as being 128gb. Next i noticed that it said it was raw and not even formatted! I never click on format or deleted any partitions so i dont get why this happened. Im completely baffeled as to why it redetected it as 137gb when it has been working all along. I have not changed any hardware or software settings at all. Im running winxp sp2 and have tried to reformat and it only gives me the 137gb. Please help me with this!!!!

either your hard drive is breaking down or you have a virus. download avg free edition at grisoft.com or use a diagnostic program from seagate. if you are unable to boot and run the antivirus software just reformat and reinstall windows. tell us what you find.

oh, i know its not a virus, i have norton running and it never detected anything. The harddrive that is screwed up is a secondary one. My windows installation is just fine. For some reason i think i ran into the harddrive size limit when i was installing the harddrive many months ago tho i cant remember what i did to get around it. The limit i know usually comes up wiht ppl not not having xp sp1 or higher, but as i stated i have sp2 so i dont know what the deal is....

Download the file: dwse_en from Seagate and run, it will pick up the correct size of the hdd.

funny thing is that i already tried using that program, however, when i do the format on the drive, the program closes to the desktop. Im thinking it may have something to do with the driver. The hd is on a secondary set of ide ports on the mobo, and is using a promise chip built into the mobo. I have managed to rescue the data on the drive, however i still need to burn it to dvd's which is going to take some time,but that does not clear up the formatting issue.

Download Seatools Here and prep the drive as if it were new. Something on your end changed the data format to raw and it needs fixed. Pick your preferences as to Fat32/NTFS and sizes and you should be good to go.
p.s. You will lose all data on that drive using this procedure.

patio.

ok, will try that tool. right now im using a rescue program to recover all my data, which is taking forever, and burning it all to dvds which is taking even longer... I remember trying to use the other program from seagate mentioned above, and it wouldnt even let me choose fat32, only ntfs, and when i hit format, it just closes down.

ok, i managed to back up all my stuff successfully, and then reinstalled the drivers for the promise card. Then i reran the seagate discwizzard, and let it auto partition and format and it worked!!! Shows it as 186gb, :-) Funny thing is that my disc rescue program isnt able to find files when the drive is formatted, weird, guess it has to be raw?? Anyways, thanks for all your guys's help.

Glad you got it going. As i stated in my previous post "you will lose all data on that drive". Now it's nice and clean again and you can proceed to fillit back up...
I would work out a regularly scheduled back-up routine for your data. It can happen anytime.

patio

cheaper drives loose a lot of space
only 186 most good drives if sold say as 200gb will have a little more for a buffer,after formatting drops dwn a bit
my rule of thumb is 1gb for every 50gb
your better off doing a low level format(write zero's or 1's to Hard drive)
this will make sure that no virus's are left behind as they (virus) write to disc and make it think there are bad sectors on drive.
find free utility for LLF on internet
wipe is one and zapit, probably a few more.
you might check ,after you are setup, with a good diagnostics program.
WD and Maxtor make drives to fail within the 2nd year

I disagree with your generalisation of WD drives.
I've had one fail in the last 8 years or so...

patio.

where did you get this information? maxtor happens to make some of the best and longest lasting drives on the market. WD isn't bad these days either.

check oem ratings on internet
plus based on my experiance with drives
these co's make there oem drives cheap
not to say there the worst they are not ,but this was not the discussion.
you are intitled to your opinion's as am I

They must be making a really bad job then since there are hundreds of computers here running 5 year old Maxor drives..

One thing I have noticed that everyone curses some HD brand and praises another, but they are always different. No correlation whatsoever Only coherent cursing I have seen was pointed towards IBM during the DeskStar fiasco.

And anyways - your experience pertains to drives that are two years old. You have no knowledge of the drives that are being made today.

there was much cursing indeed. i've also heard/said things about WD that i can't say here. people seem to like maxtors though and i've seen relatively few maxtor drives fail.

I use only WD's.
I also recommend/install them for most client's machines.
As i said only 1 failure in 8 years.

patio.

hi my harddrive has formatted iself into Raw format.. how do i do to rescue all data on it???

start a new thread in storage & networking. gove more info, such as the drive's type, interface, model, capacity, mfg, internal/external, and your pc's specs.

That's something that is kind of dangerous on this forum, is people's information and lack of facts.

It is great to post opinions and yes we are all entitled to them, but a lot of people read this forum for FACTS.

To say maxtor makes drives to fail within two years is a bold statement. If it is true, then readers need to know as maxtor is one of the top selling brands these days and is often suggested in this forum by many users.

Personally, I'd like to know if you base this "maxtors are made to die in two years" information on your opinion, or if there is any facts to back this up? As you said, we are all entitled to our opinions, of course. If it is just an opinion, then it probably shouldn't have been worded as fact. And if it is a fact, then let's see some links.

EDIT: I just re-read my post, and it sounds pretty harsh. My appologies. Almost lunch time, and I think I am just so hungry I'd snap at anyone! lol.