Second hard drive OFFLINE! XP Pro.

[Guest]

Hi There,

I am NOT on vista, but on XP Pro. I don't know where else to go, so I
figured it wouldn't hurt to try here.

Ok, so I have WAY too many pics on my main harddrive, so I decided to move a
bunch of pic folders to my 2nd, smaller harddrive. So I did that yesturday,
then went back to the second harddrive to make sure they were in the drive
and then went and deleted the pics from my main harddrive. I then went and
removed some old programs I didn't need. Then I did a disk clean up.

Didn't know anything was wrong, untill later in the evening I couldn't find
the second drive at all. I then went into Control Panel, and then into
System, and then into System restore. There it says that my second drive is
offline.

I have done many searches and can't find any info on how to turn it back on.
I really need some help on this one, we just got back from a trip to Paris
and all the pics are on that drive as well as tons of my sons baby pics. I'm
heart broken.

Please help,
Sam

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Try the following:

1. Right-click on My Computer and select Manage.
2. Click once on Disk Management to highlight it.
3. Then from the Computer Management toolbar,
click on Action > Rescan Disks.


How to use Disk Management to configure basic disks in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=309000

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User


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:

Hi There,

I am NOT on vista, but on XP Pro. I don't know where else to go, so I
figured it wouldn't hurt to try here.

Ok, so I have WAY too many pics on my main harddrive, so I decided to move a
bunch of pic folders to my 2nd, smaller harddrive. So I did that yesturday,
then went back to the second harddrive to make sure they were in the drive
and then went and deleted the pics from my main harddrive. I then went and
removed some old programs I didn't need. Then I did a disk clean up.

Didn't know anything was wrong, untill later in the evening I couldn't find
the second drive at all. I then went into Control Panel, and then into
System, and then into System restore. There it says that my second drive is
offline.

I have done many searches and can't find any info on how to turn it back on.
I really need some help on this one, we just got back from a trip to Paris
and all the pics are on that drive as well as tons of my sons baby pics. I'm
heart broken.

Please help,
Sam

 

[Paul Randall]

Hi There,

I am NOT on vista, but on XP Pro. I don't know where else to go, so I
figured it wouldn't hurt to try here.

How about microsoft.public.windowsxp.general?
Try right clicking on 'my computer' and choosing manage -> disk management,
and look at its help, searching maybe for the word offline.

 

[Guest]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I have tried them all, and the disk
manager says that the drive is healthy and active. When I try and open up the
drive, this is what comes up "The disk in drive D is not formatted. Do you
want to format it now? yes or no." I keep clicking no, cause the last thing I
want to do is format that drive.

Any ideas? Thanks again for your time,
Sam

 

[Paul Randall]

Question: what is the brand and model of the hard drives? Run MSInfo32 to
get this info. Was it ever used as a doublespaced drive, or used with
special software so it could be used on an older computer that could not
access its full capacity?

I would use a DOS boot CD or floppy with Norton GDisk & Ghost and maybe
Norton's DOS diskedit utility on it to look at what is physically on the
disk because I have them and am familiar with them and feel confident that I
won't screw something up. GDisk can display partition info and diskedit can
display any sector in a number of formats. Both can write to the disk and
mess it up further. Ghost could be used to make a restorable image of the
bad drive so you could have a number of shots at recovering your stuff.

There are free things out there that you could use, such as the ultimate
boot disk, which has similar tools. While tracking down the tools you want
to use, I would unplug the power to that drive and the data cable if need
be.

-Paul Randall