Vanishing HD.... where did all my stuff go?!

[Zeke009]

I rebuilt my machine last night with a Dragon+ mobo and added a new C drive. I had a ton of programs, updates, utilities, game files, and mp3's on my old WD Caviar 30GB ata66/5400 drive. When I plug it into my rebuilt machine with WinXP Pro running (was Win98SE) it shows nothing!

Nothing at all.... it wants me to format. :eek: I don't want to format, I want to see my 20 GB of things I did not want to lose! :mad:

I do not have a Win98 machine running in the house anymore. Just my parents WinME machine... how closely related are Win98SE and WinME. So much so that you don't think I will have any problem putting that hard drive in the WinME machine and networking with my WinXP machine?

[David]

98se and me are very similar - they should read each others data. Have you damaged the drive?

[Zeke009]

I highly doubt I damaged the drive because I never removed it from the case. I left it in there with no IDE or power while I installed WinXP on a new drive.
Here is where it gets kinda weird: I have 2 old drives, the 30Gig I am need help on and a 10Gig with the same specs (ata66 5400rpm). The 10Gig will recognize and be accessible on WinXP. I know there were some issues with the 30Gig (scandisk found something but could not correct), but the drive was always available under Win98SE with no problem. I will give the WinME a shot later tonight when I get home.

[Zeke009]

Let me clarify this here abit:

Previous setup:
PIII 866 w/ 512 MB PC133
ASUS Cusl2-C mobo w/ Win98SE
C drive (primary master) = WD Caviar 10Gig ata66/5400rpm
D drive (primary slave)= WD Caviar 30Gig ata66/5400rpm (storage)
E drive (secondary master) = Creative DVD
F drive (secondary slave)= PlexWriter

New setup
AMD XP 1900 w/512 DDR
Soyo DragonPlus w/ WinXP Professional
C drive (primary master) = wd Caviar 40Gig ata100/7200rpm
D drive (primary slave) = WD Caviar 10Gig (to transfer files, old C drive CAN ACCESS this drive!)
E drive (secondary master) = Plexwriter
F drive (secondary slave) = Creative DVD
G drive (third master) = Old 30Gig, can not access!:eek: has all the files I did not want to lose!! :mad:

Let me know if this makes more sense...

[Breadfan]

Try running it on the WinME machine. Try to remove any CD drives too, just to keep things as simple as possible on the IDE channels.

Run the C drive on its channel, and run your 30gb as a master on the second ide channel. See if that helps.

Also, check to see its recognized in the BIOS

If its recognized in the bios but windows can't do anything with it, yet it shows up in windows, than it could be a corrupt MBR (master boot record). There may be ways to fix that if its that...I think there are some utilities out there, never tried any of them though.

Give it a shot. Even if you can borrow someone's win98 machine and see if you can pick it up in dos or something.

You shouldn't have to lose your data, as long as its on there, there is a way to get it off...hopefully it won't be too hard though!

Mike

[Zeke009]

Well, I will try the WinME machine with the tips you mentioned. These utils you speak of, if anyone has any idea of what they might be... please post em!

I backed up to that drive... the websites I work on are stored there. I am in the middle of a build for a new one and it os on there, I have another means to get it... but my last brainstorming/testing session I did will be lost (it was starting to come together as well :confused: )

[Crash893]

is mabey the first dirve ntfs and the new one fat32?

[Zeke009]

All the drives are formatted Fat32. I know IDE3 and IDE4 work. I had the old, but still working 10Gig (ata66/5400rpm) running on those channels to test.

If the MBR is damaged for the 30Gig, how can I repair this? Or at least get the drive to show some sign of life, just enough for me to do some copy/paste??

[Zeke009]

Update:
I can see the normal Directory structure under DOS with a boot disk, Windows is showing a unrecognizable structure. Someone mentioned the fdisk /mbr command today.

Does this sound like it is related to a corrupted MBR? Oh, so close!! heh, I'm close! Please post your comments... ;)

[Tebore]

One Question did u check the jumpers on all the drives?

[Zeke009]

Yea, about 30 times... :eh?: