Hard Drive not seen by Win2k

Okay, I can't re-format the hard drive, because it is my work one, and it is the one that has all the critical stuff on it (yeah, I know - I have given myself all the lectures already).

I booted the computer from a cold boot, and it didn't see the hard drive. The BIOS still sees it, and it is listed under device manager (when attached as a secondary drive), but windows doesn't see it as a drive, either in drive management, or windows explorer.

Any bright ideas from anyone here before I go running and screaming?

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

Did you check your master/slave jumper settings on the drive?

Jay

 

Yup, so did my boss. We have them set correctly - we moved them around a little, and in any other setting, it doesn't even boot to the new drive properly.

Good suggestion, though. Anyone else have any? I am really desperate here.

 

You might try uninstalling the IDE channels via device manager and reboot allowing windows to reinstall them.

 

Did you go to disk management and initialize the drive to get it included into your NTFS file management?
Start > run
Type
diskmgmt.msc
hit enter

Does it show there?

 

It doesn't show up in disk management. Just device manager. I think we are going to end up sending it to a data recovery place.

 

I would say the two next steps would be to


1. Buy a new hard drive and using the software provided with it clone the old drive to the new one. This is done from a bootable cdrom. If you follow their instructions for setting jumpers and detecting drive in bios and the CD does not see both drives, yes data recovery may be your best bet. If it does and successfully clones the drive, at least you have two copies to experiment with.



2. Buy an USB external hard drive enclosure kit and install the drive there and connect it and see if you can access it that way.

 

mbr or partition table damage

This sounds to me like you probably have partition table or master boot record damage (or both) on your drive. There is some third party software that claims to be able to allow manual fixing of these problems but you still run the risk of totally destroying your data. If you have important data and can't risk loss, then I agree with your resolve to 'send the drive to the experts.'

Good luck
Top Dog

 

Indeed, I sent the drive to the experts just yesterday. I am praying, hoping, and crossing my fingers (not that crossing my fingers helps any, but it makes ME feel better) that the data on the drive will be recoverable. Everyone send good thoughts towards that drive, thanks.

~Kathie

 

Hi- HDD Disappear

Hi,

As you have said that BIOS can see your HDD but its not listed in DEvice Manager , then you need to check :

1). Is the hard disk is dynamic on mirrored partition ?
2). from Disk Management are you able to view your Hard Disk ? if you can see it from Disk Management Console and its volume is showing Healthy Status then again check if it shows HDD Drive Latter if not then try to set drive latter
3). If your partition got damaged then Stellar Phonix is really good tool to recover data from


Regards

 

Okay, it wasn't a dynamic disk, and it was not showing up in disk manager, but it was showing up in device manager.

I sent it away (with my fingers crossed) to a data recovery place. When he got back to me, he said that there was a media error on the first track (usually means the hard drive is now a paperweight), but somehow he was able to access my data. Two weeks and $500 later, my data should be arriving on three DVD's today.

This is a good thing, because it tells me that I didn't miss anything trying to access the hard drive, and I get my data back!

Now all I have to do, is get Dell to send me a replacement hard drive because it was under warrantee.

Whew!

 

Good news indeed and thanks for posting back with the follow-up.

Whew!!!!