After Fresh XP Home Install 2nd Hard Drive Gone

[Guest]

Aloha,
I have an older Gateway G-6, 333 computer with XP Home, 2 Hard drives and
512 mem. I've had XP Home running on this computer with both of these Hard
Drives for a long time, needed to do a Fresh Install due to other problems.
Both drives were NTSF file structure and both worked just fine.

I have Partition Magic 8 and it shows the drive existing but says the file
structure is "Other Type 44" and there is NO drive letter associated with
this drive now. (it was partitioned as 2 drives when it was working fine)

Device Manager and Disk Management both show the drive, say its Healthy and
Working Properly but No drive letter. I've Uninstalled the second drive and
Windows XP finds it, installs it and says its working properly. Ha Ha!

I think I know what caused this but have NO idea how to fix it. When both
drives were working long ago I had Moved my "My Documents" to this second
drive and I figure when removing XP from the primary drive there might have
been some Link to "My Documents" that messed this all up, like some files
held on my C: Drive with XP linking it to D: well, thats my thoughts.

There is only a couple files on this second drive that I am not willing to
loose and darned if I didn't think to back them up thinking they were on a
totally separate drive and that being like backed up. Yes, with Hindsight now
Installed "I know", so here I am.

It seems that Partition Magic 8 could format this drive but I won't do that
until I've exhausted every possible method of recovery.

So, if any of you know of any Programs that might recover this or places to
search that would be great!

I know there are people that work on hard drives and charge to recover them,
if there aren't any Free ways and someone knows of this type of direction for
me please let me know.

Joyboy

 

[neil]

When you are using disk management are you able to "explore" the disk.??

If you can you just need to assign a drive letter to see it in explorer or
my computer. If you want to you can move the drive letters around for the
second drive and cdrom but not the C:| drive.

best of luck
Neil

 

[Guest]

No, the only option is "Delete Partition" and "Help" which Help is No Help.
Thanks anyway

 

[neil]

Hi,
Really installing XP onto the primary drive should not interfere with the
contents of the secondary drive, whether you have my documents stored on
there or not.
Can you check the drive with the manufacturers utility.??
I guess you haven't changed any links on the drive/s for primary secondary
etc & you definitely installed to the primary drive. Other than that if the
drive was partitioned the partition table may have become corrupted. Try the
following not sure if it will solve your problem though:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=corrupt+partition+table+xp&meta=

all the best
Neil

 

[Guest]

I've got the same problem, just fitted a new harddrive as primary slave to
run alongside full up primary master, bios auto detected it, it appears in
device manager as ok, but not on my computer, unable to access drive to
format or partition as it has no drive letter, 1st time I've done this on XP
never had a problem with W98

 

[neil]

Yours may not be the same problem. Right click on my computer go to Manage
then disk management, from there you should be able to partition and format
the new drive. Then assign a drive letter if it doesn't happen
automatically.

Neil

 

[Guest]

I was thinking of trying "Hard Drive Mechanic" and see if it works as they
claim, anyone have any thoughts on it?
Joyboy