Hard Drive no longer recognized after deleting the partition

[MikelPoppe]

I have an Internal IDE hard drive attached to a USB cord to make it
external. In an attempt to reformat this drive I read to use the
Windows Disk Management Utility and delete the partition on the drive.
While I have no concern for the data on the drive it no longer works.
Prior to this incident multiple computers had no trouble reading the
drive. Now windows recognizes it as a USB mass storage device that it
is unsure what to do with and is essentially unrecognized. I have
attempted to use the Maxtor maxblast software but it does not recognize
the drive either. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

[peter]

if you deleted the "partition" on the drive you should at least see
unallocated space...that would need to be formatted in order for XP to see
the drive
peter

 

[George Bashore]

Mike
The drive has to have a partition.
I would use an old boot disk (Win98 or WinME) and use fdisk to put a primary
partition on it.
Don't make it "active"
You can format it from XP for the NTFS.
George

 

[MikelPoppe]

In response to both comments, XP does not recognize the drive really in
any way other than in the device manager as a USB device it is
unfamiliar with, claiming the device could not be started. This means
I both cannot see any unallocated space or use XP to format in NTFS.
The idea of a boot disk is promising the down side is no college
student with a newly purchased computer seems to have a floppy disk let
alone a floppy drive. I will work on this and attempt to make it work,
in the mean time any other ideas?

 

[MikelPoppe]

Solution:
I attached the hard drive to a laptop running Windows 2000. I ran the
Maxblast Maxtor software and it recognized the drive. Problem solved.

 

[Guest]

Are the jumpers set correctly as per the instructions for the USB enclosure,
my WD is set to "master" as per my instructions, yours may very.. I was able
to see a older HDD set in the "slave" position too, so go figure..
In Disk Management are you given an option to initialize the drive..?
See example (fig. 4 ) in link below..
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=2cfd04d2e817f010VgnVCM1000005106090aRCRD


http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...e/DiamondMax Family/Diagnostics&downloadID=22
May need to update PowerMax utility, see link above, your call..

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...age/DiamondMax+Family/Utilities&downloadID=19
Max blast 4 boot CD ISO, see link above..

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...oftware Downloads/All Downloads&downloadID=57
Max blast 4 ALL Windows downloads..
Cheers
j;-j

 

[Pete Stavrakoglou]

In response to both comments, XP does not recognize the drive really in
any way other than in the device manager as a USB device it is
unfamiliar with, claiming the device could not be started. This means
I both cannot see any unallocated space or use XP to format in NTFS.
The idea of a boot disk is promising the down side is no college
student with a newly purchased computer seems to have a floppy disk let
alone a floppy drive. I will work on this and attempt to make it work,
in the mean time any other ideas?

I know you've solved your problem, glad to hear that! I'm curious - did you
try to create the partition and format the drive using "Disk Management" in
XP or were trying to see the drive through Windows Explorer and format it by
right-clicking and choosing format? I had the same problem as you but using
Disk Management took care of it.

 

[Ashton Crusher]

Solution:
I attached the hard drive to a laptop running Windows 2000. I ran the
Maxblast Maxtor software and it recognized the drive. Problem solved.

Hmm. I had the same problem you did. My solution was to take the
drive out of the external enclosure and stick it back inside the
computer to repartition and reformat it. Then I put it back in the
external enclosure and it worked fine. It sounds like there is a
problem in XP that's not in 2000 as far as dealing with low level
stuff over the USB port. Seems backwards as you would think the newer
OS would be the one that worked better for that.