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Thread ID: 46155 2004-06-15 04:21:00 Ever had that horrible sinking feeling...? Stormwarden (388) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
244726 2004-06-15 04:21:00 Just reinstalled XP this afternoon, and I noticed that my second hard drive wasn't showing up in explorer.

I have two hard drives, both are split into two partitions, XP is on HDD 1 partition 0, partition 1 is storage

HDD 2 partition 0 WAS storage (110GB or so of it) but it's not showing up, and partition 1 was left empty for whenever I get around to installing Linux. If ever

Anyway, I went into the computer management thingy and looked under Disk Management, and it shows up there all right, but UNFORMATTED :(

The disk concerned is a WD 120GB 2mb cache etc, it was formatted as NTFS with compression turned on, and as well as having its own drive letter it was mounted in the "media" folder on my other NTFS partition on drive 1.

My computer is an Athlon XP, 512MB, Nforce2, WinXP SP1, and yes, I've installed all the appropriate drivers etc.

If someone knows what's going on here could you PLEASE let me know, since that 110 GB of anime took foreaver to download over 56k...

Thanks for your time
Stormwarden (388)
244727 2004-06-15 08:03:00 Bump Mrs Bump (5694)
244728 2004-06-15 09:03:00 :^O Mrs Bump

Anyway, does this drive show up under a drive letter in My Computer?

If its not showing the partition properly whats probably happened is the MBR has been corrupted. NTFS stores a backup copy of this at the end of the partition, so you have a good chance of recovering the data.

Have you got Norton System Works? If you ran Disk Doctor off that, it would normally be able to recover it quite well. It will take a while, but it should fix it.

Otherwise your other option is to do a chkdsk. Go Start -> run -> cmd -> enter. That should bring up the command prompt.

Ok type chkdsk /? for the options.

I did one of these the other day when my 90Gb partition died.

chkdsk d: /x /r
kiki (762)
244729 2004-06-15 09:53:00 OMG I'm just so stupid! I've got Norton, but I haven't installed it yet since I've been in a bother over the whole thing.

I'll try it now... *fingers crossed*

btw, what's with the 'bump'?
Stormwarden (388)
244730 2004-06-15 09:55:00 brings it back to the top of the list so that others get to see it if there has been no posts/replies, to a good question and it has slipped off the front page Wayne H (1736)
244731 2004-06-15 09:56:00 problem: Norton doesn't give me an option to scan a disk that isn't formatted - should I format it first? (I'm inclined to think not) Stormwarden (388)
244732 2004-06-15 10:39:00 :O No don't format it.

Try scanning one of the disks. When I did it Nortons found some irregularities in the partition table and asked if they wanted to be corrected and found a few of my partitions which had data on them.

So it doesn't have a drive letter at all?
kiki (762)
244733 2004-06-15 10:47:00 > btw, what's with the 'bump'?

Bring Up My Post
Mrs Bump (5694)
244734 2004-06-15 10:54:00 lol - thanks Mrs Bump!

It has a drive letter, but the drive management thingy in XP shows it as "unformatted", and Norton just spouts something about how it can't check a filesystem that isn't there.

The problem is, I have two HDDs, one is completely fine, the other concerned has one screwed partition and one (supposedly) OK partition, but the OK one isn't being detected at all by windows, and so I can't make norton check that one in the hopes that it will fix the other on the same drive at the same time...
Stormwarden (388)
244735 2004-06-15 12:07:00 Boot to your XP CD, get into the repair console and choose fixmbr or is fxmbr.

A quick google found Win XP, How do I restore MBR (www.experts-exchange.com) yours may differ check out the Microsoft Knowledge Base (support.microsoft.com) with a search of Fix MBR with XP selected as your OS..

Cheers Murray P
Murray P (44)
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