2nd harddrive lost 22Gb of space and all data

[Bret McBride]

I just completed installing a new 120Gb hard drive to my
system as the master. The old 30Gb was the boot drive,
but was moved to slave. I'm running Win2K Pro as the
operating system on this computer.

Here's what happened...
My new 120Gb drive is up and running and Win2K is
installed. It's drive C. My old 30Gb drive is working okay
and is drive D.

I load the nVidia drivers off of D. No problems. I can
also see all the old data and program directories on drive
D.

Then, I start the long, tedious process of updating my
Win2K via the Windows Update site. The CD I have is pre
any service packs. I finish all the updates including
service pack 4.

My 30Gb drive D is now being reported as an unformatted
7.8Gb drive. I'm not sure how much free space was on it,
although 8Gb sounds about right. At no point did I create
or delete partitions, and I'm not about to format the
thing. Using the Windows Disk Management tools, it looks
like a healthy 7.8Gb partition.

First, any ideas on what happened?
Second, any ideas on how to fix it?

I'd like to get a bit more of the data back off the drive
without yanking it out of the machine and putting it into
a another computer, although that is an option.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Thagor]

May be a conflict between the two drives.
1. Re-check the drive jumper to insure a match with your current config.
2. Try re-Detecting the drive in BIOS and see if it is being correctly
identified.
3. If that doesn't help try setting the BIOS to factory defaults with a
power down.
4. If that doesn't help, try placing the drive on a Secondary channel.

Post back with results...