Cannot read data

[BoboTWG]

Hello, I have a new WD 320 GB hard drive. I loaded XP Pro on it a couple of
weeks ago. I started downloading data onto it to free up some room on the
server. Now I cannot boot to it. Getting "no OS found" error at boot.

I set it into another computer as the slave and it sees it but asks me if I
want to format the drive because it is not formatted. I booted to a 98 boot
disk and ran FDISK and it shows 1 large partition of unknown type. It also
shows that it is already active. I have booted from the XP CD and it is not
showing a prior load of XP on the disk and wants to format it.

Is there anyway to retrieve the data on the disk? I set it as a slave and
ran the WD Data Lifeguard diagnostics on the drive and it is showing as
good. Any ideas welcome.

Thank you in advance,

Aaron

 

[Pop`]

Hello, I have a new WD 320 GB hard drive. I loaded XP Pro on it a
couple of weeks ago. I started downloading data onto it to free up
some room on the server. Now I cannot boot to it. Getting "no OS
found" error at boot.

Is this all in the same computer box?

I set it into another computer as the slave and it sees it but asks
me if I want to format the drive because it is not formatted.

What format was ued to format it? FAT or NTFS? Win98 can not see NTFS
partitions. Both can see FAT, FAT32.

I

booted to a 98 boot disk and ran FDISK and it shows 1 large partition
of unknown type.

If NTFS, forget it; win98 can't see anything on it. 98 sees FAT only.

It also shows that it is already active. I have

booted from the XP CD and it is not showing a prior load of XP on the
disk and wants to format it.

Strange; unless you let 98 do something to it. If 98 tried ANYTHING on it,
the install will have been trashed, the boot sector changed, etc..

Is there anyway to retrieve the data on the disk? I set it as a slave
and ran the WD Data Lifeguard diagnostics on the drive and it is
showing as good. Any ideas welcome.

Thank you in advance,

Aaron

Any chance it's a SATA or has been set to "hidden"? Have you assigned a
drive letter to it in both systems you installed it in? Or at least
verified it was assigned a drive letter? Then again, SATA has no
master/slave relationships, so ... guess it's not SATA. SATA has a small, 7
pin data cable; ATA has the big wide one with the red stripe.

Try using XP's Disk Manager to look at it, while it's installed as a Slave.

Try running chkdsk /r on it from XP. If it fixes any errors, keep on
running chkdsk /r until it finds no more errors. This will either fix it or
determine that it's unfixable.

Sounds to me like you're looking at starting over by booting from the XP CD
and delete/recreate the partition, format, and load XP.
Once that's done, give it a couple days to make sure it's stable before
you start to add stuff to it.
BEWARE: Imageing programs CAN overwrite an existing os; watch out for
anything system-wise being restored, IFF you're using a restore feature that
is.
And never let it near the internet until you have av, firewall and
spyware in place first! Then update all ASAP.

Regards,\

Pop`

 

[BoboTWG]

Thank you Pop. I appreciate the advice. Yes it is ATA. I will try disk
manager again and chkdsk /r. I know that it is showing a drive letter in XP
when installed as a slave. Thank you again. I think it is this computer. I
am using a completely different drive in it and it has twice all of a sudden
stopped seeing the different drive until rebooted. Probably a flaky MB &
time for the boss to get me a new computer.

Thank you again for the assistance.

Aaron