Drive unseen - possibly reformatted?

My system before crashing was setup with 3 hard disks. A 36GB raptor that had the OS on it, a 76GB raptor for Work In Progress and a 200GB Sata drive for storage.

When it was originally setup, in order to install windows I had to disconnect the 200GB drive as windows wanted to default to that drive to install the OS and I wanted it on the 36Gb raptor. No dramas...I disconnected it, installed Windows 2000 onto the 36Gb raptor and then just plugged the 200Gb drive back on. The PC recognised it and there was no problems.

When the 36GB raptor (OS) drive crashed recently - something to do with boot.ini file and ntoskrnl.exe going corrupt I had to reinstall windows. Not realising I needed to disconnect the 200Gb drive so that it would reinstall onto the 36GB i got to the screen that wanted to start re-formatting the drive. I realised it was going to reformat the 200Gb storage drive (which I didn't want to happen) so I quickly pulled the windows 2000 CD out and hit reset. I thought I did that before it started doing the format...I can't be sure. Anyway, I unplugged the 200Gb, installed windows 2000 onto the 36Gb raptor and plugged the 200gb drive back up.

BIOS sees all three drives, but when I get into windows 2000 and double click "My Computer" the window opens and after a second or two of thinking shows the 200GB drive (drive J) but with no "Total Size" or "Free Space" data...it's just blank.

I have checked "Disk Management" and it lists the J: drive there (Healthy and Active) but with no "File System" (eg, NTFS). It shows Capacity = 186.31GB and Free Space = 186.31GB. I'm guessing it thinks it's a new disk ready to be formatted.

Do you think that the format might have accidentally started when I thought I'd stopped it in time? Does anyone have any suggestions on trouble shooting this or am I going to have to run data recovery software on this 200GB drive to try and get my data back?

Brad

 

Have you installed at least SP3 yet in 2K? Without the 48bit LBA fix 2K won’t work with hard drives over 137gig. This little app can check if it’s done or not and set it for you if need be. http://www.48bitlba.com/enablebiglbatool.htm

 

Yep. Installed service pack 4 and also inserted the LBA into the registry just in case that was the problem.

Brad

 

Sorry Brad, but are you saying that did or didn’t work? If no then you might have to reboot after applying the fix "“ always worth rebooting anyway.

 

Sorry McTavish,

I meant that I changed the registry, rebooted and it still didn't work. I have just run GetDataBack (NTFS) and have been able to recover the data that I hadn't backed up. I figured that somehow, it must have started to reformat that 200Gb drive and I'd lost the table...I guess I wasn't quick enough. I guess that's just the one problem with my setup the way it is...I have to remember to unplug that large 200Gb drive when I want to reinstall the OS or put on a new OS.

Is this a common thing when you have a three drive setup? By that I mean, the way we had to setup the 36Gb raptor, the 74Gb Raptor and the 200Gb raptor and for some reason windows wants to install onto the 200Gb raptor even though you've set it to default to the 36Gb raptor.

Thanks.

Brad.