O
Olivier Travers
Hi,
I moved a Maxtor 300GB IDE drive from a Windows XP Pro SP1 machine
(that suffered a big hardware failure) to a working Windows XP Pro
machine without SP1/2 installed. For reference, during the failure of
the first PC, three other drives seem to have suffered physical damage
since two of them (IDEs from WD) are not recognized in the BIOS anymore
(tried them in two different PCs, what can I do with them at this
point?), and the third (Maxtor SATA) seems to short the motherboard
(the power supply turns itself off a split second after power on). The
SATA drive is probably the cause of the problem in the first place:
after some tests I found it was the device that seemed to short my
motherboard, and during those tests (after several automatic power
offs) I eventually got a buff of smoke from it (not intented of course,
I was trying to isolate the source of the short).
Back to the Maxtor IDE drive that still seems physically ok, as it's
the one I have most hope of recovery for. It was recognized as 300GB in
the bios of the PC I moved it to, but it appeared as unformated and
limited to 128GB under Windows. After some research I moved it to a
third Windows XP Pro box, this one with SP2 installed as well as the
Maxtor large drive fix (for some reason I don't think I ever needed
that large drive fix on the first PC the drive was in).
Now Windows recognizes the drive at its proper 300GB, but it reports a
128GB unformated partition, plus the remaining space as unpartitioned
space. I'm not sure the 128GB thing is due to the original crash, or to
my connection to a PC that wasn't set up to recognize the whole disk.
Of course I never repartitioned the drive myself.
How can I restore my 300GB partition and the data on that drive? Thanks
a lot for any help, as often in these stories there's some unsaved data
on that drive...
I moved a Maxtor 300GB IDE drive from a Windows XP Pro SP1 machine
(that suffered a big hardware failure) to a working Windows XP Pro
machine without SP1/2 installed. For reference, during the failure of
the first PC, three other drives seem to have suffered physical damage
since two of them (IDEs from WD) are not recognized in the BIOS anymore
(tried them in two different PCs, what can I do with them at this
point?), and the third (Maxtor SATA) seems to short the motherboard
(the power supply turns itself off a split second after power on). The
SATA drive is probably the cause of the problem in the first place:
after some tests I found it was the device that seemed to short my
motherboard, and during those tests (after several automatic power
offs) I eventually got a buff of smoke from it (not intented of course,
I was trying to isolate the source of the short).
Back to the Maxtor IDE drive that still seems physically ok, as it's
the one I have most hope of recovery for. It was recognized as 300GB in
the bios of the PC I moved it to, but it appeared as unformated and
limited to 128GB under Windows. After some research I moved it to a
third Windows XP Pro box, this one with SP2 installed as well as the
Maxtor large drive fix (for some reason I don't think I ever needed
that large drive fix on the first PC the drive was in).
Now Windows recognizes the drive at its proper 300GB, but it reports a
128GB unformated partition, plus the remaining space as unpartitioned
space. I'm not sure the 128GB thing is due to the original crash, or to
my connection to a PC that wasn't set up to recognize the whole disk.
Of course I never repartitioned the drive myself.
How can I restore my 300GB partition and the data on that drive? Thanks
a lot for any help, as often in these stories there's some unsaved data
on that drive...