Hard drive not showing up.

[alidabiri]

hi folks,
i have a win-98se pc, pentium II 400mhz. i recently installed a western digital 80 g hard drive on it using w-d's utility called datalifeguard. I installed this drive as d: drive. all worked ok. after a couple of weeks, my pc started freezing on boot up and during normal operation frequently. i copied all my data from c: drive onto this d: drive. i finally decided to reformat my c: drive and re-install win-98se. i did and after install, i couldn't get the d: drive to show up. everybody suggests to reformat the new d: drive and it should work ok. but i have data on it, and i can't do an fdisk. the drive shows up on bios, and even shows up on western digital's utility program on drive info. is there anyway i can get this drive to show up on explorer or on "mycomputer"? how can i get my data back? please help me.

 

[Samstoned]

hav eyou check your cabling or drive jumpers
I would make the D drive a slave on 2nd ide
it will change the drive letter
this utility you used may have cuased 98 not to read the drive now.
paragon partition manager may be able to remount the drive for you
there are other disk mangers out there also like acronis
these 2 I am familiar with
I think 98 has issues with drives larger than 32gb
may want to read up on that

 

[alidabiri]

thanks sam for the info.
i checked out paragon's stuff, sounds like what i need. finally i managed to install win-xp professional on the pc. and i can see the drive as g: but can't open or explore it. it wants me to format it, which i can't do. one question since you are familiar with paragon. if i use paragon, will it leave my data untouched? or will it destroy it? will i be able to access the drive? any info will be appreciated.
thanks again.

 

[kirock]

Just a thought

When you installed XP over 98, did you reformat the C drive and install XP as NTSF. Your second drive will still be FAT32, I'm not sure if XP is trying to format it because of the conflict. Samstoned do you know?

 

[zellyman]

You could get a knoppix linux distro and just copy all of your files over, if you at all familiar with linux, thus making reformatting possible. DVD or zip backups with linux is possible also.

 

[alidabiri]

when if re-installed win98se, i reformated c: drive, not the problem drive. i'm not sure if the fdisk prompted me for ntfs or anything. then after i couldn't get the drive d: (the problem drive) to show up in 98, i installed xp. it showed up under xp, but would not open or explore. the reason i installed xp, because western digital told me that with disk management i could fix it. but it doesn't want to fix it, unless you format it. it's frustrating. the drive is there, but we can't get to the data. any ideas on how to read a "nameless" and lost drive?

 

[Samstoned]

at this point paragon should not damage files if you just need to rearrange partitions be aware
your file systems are diff if you used the default ntfs file system
paragon should show what type of file system is on that part you are trying to partition and also convert to ntfs for you with out harming files
I would first try to not open file but copy and move to drive that has new format xp should automaticly change this file to new system.test a small partition after move or file save
I;m going to run a little test and create a fat 32 file system partition and play with it
I'ave got gigs to spare

on my old pc xp would see fat32 ,but will not open it without a utility so I have never tried to access files from 98 fat32 when I had dual boot.that was when some of my apps would only run under win98

 

[alidabiri]

thanks so much sam.
i downloaded paragon. it says it would do all kinds of partition stuff without damaging the data. your info is much appreciated. one other thing i tell you is that xp shows both my c: drive (the good one) and d: (the bad one). on c: drive lists fat32 or something like that. but on d: it's blank for file types. so, i'm gonna try paragon this evening and i'll keep you posted. at the mean time, if you find out any thing, please let me know.

thanks again for your help. i had been looking for almost 2 weeks for a product like paragaon.

 

[Samstoned]

test finished
I made a partiton and fat32 system added files navagated
and changes files (images)
converted to ntfs and rebooted stopped chkdsk from running ,checked files again all all ok
seems from your troubles at start you had a hard drive issue probably the size .
from last statement paragon will work as far as good file system ,but if corrupt it will just convert the corrupt files and you will still have a problem reading them
i did not use paragonto creat drive letter left this out of my paragon test ,created letter with xp management
it does sound like files are corrupted adding a diff file system disk to xp will invoke chkdsk and I have noticed that chkdsk will corrupt these files.
if I load a known good drive to a diff machine I stop this process.this goes for usb dries especially

 

[alidabiri]

thanks sam,
i tried paragon last night. it didn't work. i could not fine any lost partitions on the disk. i noticed that under xp management, my bad drive shows up without file system info. but the c: drive shows up as fat32. anyway, i still haven't been able to find a solution to recover this 7 gig of data that resides on this drive. i think my only coice would be to take it to a shop so somebody can recover the data. any suggestions?

 

[Samstoned]

there are at least 6 good data recovery utilitys on the market

check your private messages