Unreadable hdd after XP re-installation

[Guest]

Situation: pc was slow, so I decided to reformat the 40Gb hdd (where the OS
was), and so moved all my documents and other files to another hdd of 160Gb.
I reformatted. I re-installed Windows XP Pro on the 40Gb. I could not see the
160 anymore. In Computer Management it says the disk is UNREADABLE, which had
me downloading an app to check its integrity. Disk was fine. Apparently it's
a problem with corruption or I/O errors on part of the disk, which is
plausible but unlikely (I hope...). The disk is a Maxtor 6Y10P0, 160Gb,
dynamic. Due to risk of HUGE data loss imminent, I.. well... NEED HELP!!
AAAARG!

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Well, since the data is critical, I would cut to the chase and install XP to
that data drive, removing the other completely during setup. It sounds like
you could then format the removed drive and start some rearrangement, once
the data is safe..

 

[WinGuy]

Situation: pc was slow, so I decided to reformat the 40Gb hdd (where the
OS
was), and so moved all my documents and other files to another hdd of
160Gb.
I reformatted. I re-installed Windows XP Pro on the 40Gb. I could not see
the
160 anymore. In Computer Management it says the disk is UNREADABLE, which
had
me downloading an app to check its integrity. Disk was fine. Apparently
it's
a problem with corruption or I/O errors on part of the disk, which is
plausible but unlikely (I hope...). The disk is a Maxtor 6Y10P0, 160Gb,
dynamic. Due to risk of HUGE data loss imminent, I.. well... NEED HELP!!
AAAARG!

I'm told this should not be necessary in XP SP1 and greater, but I'm not
sure if I agree with what I was told. In any case it certainly will not hurt
to try this.

Please download and use the "big drive" registry modification utility from
Maxtor from here ...
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...tware Downloads/ATA Hard Drives&downloadID=11

Then reboot and then reformat the 160 Gigs HDD again.

The utility will have no effect if your drive has a SCSI interface. In that
case you must have a SCSI Card that supports big drives.

 

[WinGuy]

Situation: pc was slow, so I decided to reformat the 40Gb hdd (where the

was), and so moved all my documents and other files to another hdd of

I reformatted. I re-installed Windows XP Pro on the 40Gb. I could not see

160 anymore. In Computer Management it says the disk is UNREADABLE, which

me downloading an app to check its integrity. Disk was fine. Apparently

a problem with corruption or I/O errors on part of the disk, which is

plausible but unlikely (I hope...). The disk is a Maxtor 6Y10P0, 160Gb,

dynamic. Due to risk of HUGE data loss imminent, I.. well... NEED HELP!!

AAAARG!

I couldn't cancel my old message, but I need to modify what I said in my
previous post in this thread.



Maxtor has a utility for "big drives" greater than 137Gigs in size. They say
it *is* needed with XP SP1. You can get it from here ...

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...tware Downloads/ATA Hard Drives&downloadID=11



I'm told that you don't need to use the utility with XP SP1, but I'm not
sure that is true and I didn't see that the above reference link mentions
anything about SP2. However, it certainly will not hurt to apply the patch
the utility makes to the XP registry to support big drives. So I recommend
doing so regardless.



In my previous post I said to reformat your 160gb HDD. That might end up
being necessary if you tried to write anything to it after you reinstalled
XP to your smaller HDD and then found that you could not access the drive.
XP might have tried to write to the drive during the install, and being SP1
or earlier (during the install) it might have damaged the file structure of
the 160gb drive in the process.



But, once the above patch has been applied and you've thereafter rebooted,
then you could try doing a full check for bad sectors and letting it try to
fix errors automatically upon that 160gb drive. It might find "orphaned"
files that were caused while reinstalling XP SP1 or earlier, and restore
them to access. If this procedure works then you probably will not have to
reformat the 160gb HDD after you apply the above fix.



Winguy

 

[WinGuy]

A followup to my last post in this thread. Maxtor says their "big drive"
patch is needed with "Service Pack 1" (SP1, see link below where I quote
that from). It specifically says so. But if you follow the link they give at
the bottom of their page to the Micrsoft article 303013, Microsoft says it
is not needed! This might be why some people have said it is not needed
(because Microsoft says so). But I think it prudent when dealing with a
non-Microsoft product (Maxtor in this case) that what the manufacture of a
device says to do is what should be done, regardless of what Microsoft says
about it. Again I note that applying the registry mod that the Maxtor
utility performs will certainly not hurt anything, and it might help, and
just maybe it's really needed with SP1 after all.

I've never before seen a conflict between what a device manufacture says to
do and what Microsoft says. This is a first for me! But it explains an
argument I had yesterday in this newsgroup ... (if you're reading this, Tim,
give this info to that newsgroup you mentioned)

Ref:
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...tware Downloads/ATA Hard Drives&downloadID=11

Winguy