Hi Gang,

My first question!

XP SP2, 3 HDD's. 1st Drive Primary Active Fat32(0), 2nd Drive Data Fat32(1), 3rd Drive NTFS(2).

The problem is that when I plug in the 3rd Drive, it shows up correctly in BIOS, also in ControlPanel/System/Hard Drives, but NOT in MyPC.

And In AdminTools, shows up correctly as formatted 37.57Gig and is NOT listed in the HDD list, but shows up as Disk2 and says Unallocated. I KNOW it has two partitions and LOTS of data. It has been in and out of this XP box on different IDE's and even on a PCI ATA card, and always found itself and showed up in MyPC, but not now... :-( I have tried putting it back where it was several times before, but no bananas...

I am kind of a "fix-it" guy rather than a R&R (reformat & reinstall) type so I would be looking for a "fix"... as I understand that R&R is a last resort.

Seems to me that there should be a way to "see" it in MyPC by assigning drive letters, but there is no option to do that... Any ideas? Thanks.

Two thoughts that come to mind:
Have you tried to delete the drives in the Device Manager and see if they are re-detected properly?
You might also try doing the same with the IDE ATA Controllers to let each of them be detected again as well.

Thanks, PS&C, I have tried that and tried it again after reading your suggestions. As I understand it, while Win98 does not, XP DOES remember what the drive letter was before and those letters may be taken in the present setup, as I have C: and D: which are the two partitions on the 1st Primary Active (0) drive, E: which is the burner and G: and H:, the two partitions on the 3rd Data Drive.

I have even uninstalled and started XP with only the 1st Primary Active drive, to let it register, then the 2nd drive (result: NO NEW letters!) then the 3rd Drive which showed up as G: and H: and then the burner, with grabbed its E: again. So the XP elephant doesn't forget...

Anybody else have any ideas? Thanks.

Hi,
Try formatting that drive using the DOS PROMPT (format disk2)

Format? And lose all my data? Sorry, that is not an option...

Hi,
Sorry olamoree!
I did not get the importance of your data in that drive.

No problem. You overlooked that in my initial post, I gather. I need the data. Any further suggestions will be most welcome. Thanks.

I would start looking for software to recover your data from this drive. Don't try to repair the drive or rebuild the MFT just yet, if you need the data just get that first. I have had some success with PC Inspector File recovery:
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm

But that was on a Fat32 drive, not sure how it is with NTFS. Maybe someone else has another tool that could help.

By the way, do you know if the disk is basic or dynamic?

Thanks, Stu, yes it is a basic disk (NTFS) that was used for data storage...

I DLed and tried out PCInspector. It does NOT show the drive in the Logical List but it DOES show up with the correct gigs in the Physical List. So scanned it, 328 minutes... but when finished, the proggy jumped back to the main screen without giving me a list to select for back up. It indicated 26 drives?? And 285 Directories, which is about right as I recall. It explains that the 26 drives listed is very possible due to previous use of the disk. But it gave me no opportunity to copy the data to another drive, so I am still looking at possibilities...

Looking at it in MyPC/Manage/DiskManagement, it shows it as Unallocated with the correct 37.27Gigs but no option to assign drive letter.

Would you believe it, I have TWO drives that yes, show up correctly in BIOS and CP/System/HardDrives, but NOT in MyPC. This second drive is of no importance, but just to show that it is not an isolated problem...

Now, how to get it to show up in MyPC?

Is it possible to try either of these disks in another computer system? With two going wrong I would suspect other factors like software corruption or IDE controller issues.

Hi olamoree,
You mentioned that the drive is in the bios and in the Disk Management. In Disk Managerment it is not givivng an option to "Initialize"? Did you try right clicking the drive there? Normally you should get an option to assign the drive letter.

Thanks Stu, the "unimportant" is now working! But the "important" one STILL does not show up in MyPC... they are both NTFS and plugged into an XP box. I don't have another XP box to try them in, only my faithful "when all else goes bad" Win98SE box. The unimportant one just has a Primary Active WinNT install and no files of importance, but it is working. The other was in the XP box as a secondary slave data HDD when a Sasser hit the boot sector of the Primary Active HDD. There MUST be a way to force a drive letter out of that turkey!

Hi Shaved, and thanks. The ONLY options I get for that drive in Disk Management is the "Info", "format" and "Delete" options... info shows it is a MBR disk of 37.27G which is correct and it shows up as Unallocated... I am presently running "Recover My Files" on it for the past 12 hours and it shows it has found 5623 files after 11 hours and 20 minutes... I am going to wait for it to finish and try to copy those files off onto another drive...

Anything else? Thanks.

Did this problem ever get fixed? I have the same problem. A NTSF XPSP2 secondary hard drive with a bunch of data on it and I can't access it. I can see it in disc management and the device manager but it doesn't show up under diskpart/list volume or My computer. When I tried to download software to recover the data, the software doesn't see the disc either.

Any ideas?

Hi Rino... No, I never could get the drive to show Allocated nor assign it a drive letter, so I just put it in the Drawer of Broken Dreams until along came a spiffy cable at a local computer show for $20... a power supply with a 12v Molex and a USB cable with, Da, Da, SATA plug, IDE plug and SCSI plug! So as I have the time, I just plug in all these old funky drives in the Drawer and as they show up as "dumb drives", just roll the data off them that I want to keep and then erase the drive and pass it on to the less fortunate. Like me, your problem is something that trashed the MBR/File Allocation Table and these proggys that pretend to fix them with MBR/Fix, etc. I have had NO luck with. But I do plan on learning how to reveal and reconstruct by rewriting the code of the MBR and FAT's as I think that would be a very useful think to know. Don't give up!

I found a solution. It cost me $70 dollars but it is working. I downloaded a Drive Doctor for extracting NTFS data and it is extracting the data from the hard drive. I had about 28gig that I needed and it is taking well over 3 hours to pull it from the old drive and put it on a usb drive. Hopefully this is solved. I will just reformat the hard dive and move on after I have the data.

Cool, Rhino, what is the name of the $70 Solution? And 28Gig should take a lot longer than 3 hours... Good luck and let us know if you were able to recover everything.

Data Doctor Recovery NTFS

Always check jumpers

Hi Inter,

Wow, almost TWO years later you reply. Well, yes, jumpers checked. As I connected my sick drives on this spiffy USB to IDE/SCSI/SATA cable, M, S or CS is not important as it is seen as a USB drive and assigned a letter. I have "looked" at this drive with various programs and have scraped off some information I wanted to keep, LLFed it and FDISKed it and gave it away to a newbie... he doesn't have internet so he never gets in any trouble! Lol Thanks for your interest and reply.

Unnalocated drive doesnot format and delet,so,what should I do?