XP killed my new harddrives

[Arron]

I installed windows XP home edition onto a 10gb NTFS harddrive on a computer
with an existing 120gb FAT32 drive almost full with data. Everything went
smooth and worked great for about a month. I tried taking an 80gb FAT32 drive
almost full of data and adding it to my computer changing the positions
around on the cables.

Upon the first boot after the new harddrive was added Windows XP appears to
have done something to both of my fat32 drives and now they show nothing but
gobly gook, I can't access my files. Just random characters show up. It looks
as if XP wrote new file allocation tables to the drives or screwed up the
MBR's all in one motion. The drives still show under properties as FAT32, and
the correct used size and free space show up, but everything is gibberish.
WHAT HAPPENED? I put everything back to normal and my 80gb drive back in my
old comptuer but the drives are still messed up. I tried a system restore to
no success. One of the drives I ran scandisk and it said there were 2 copies
of the file allocation table that do not match and when it tried to fix it,
the problem just looks worse. I downloaded Getdataback and it only recovered
30% of the files it appears with the shareware version.

Can anyone explain to me why windows xp decided to screw up the harddrive
structures? And the best solution to at least recovering as much data as I
can? Is there a way to view the 2 copies of the file allocation table and try
changing them to primary position without deleting them? Could something else
be fixed that was messed up? Is file recovery software my best bet?
I would really appreciate any help recovering my data, and am greatly
disturbed by this fact of windows xp. Thanks.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I installed windows XP home edition onto a 10gb NTFS harddrive on a
computer with an existing 120gb FAT32 drive almost full with data.
Everything went smooth and worked great for about a month. I tried
taking an 80gb FAT32 drive almost full of data and adding it to my
computer changing the positions around on the cables.

Upon the first boot after the new harddrive was added Windows XP
appears to have done something to both of my fat32 drives and now
they show nothing but gobly gook, I can't access my files. Just
random characters show up. It looks as if XP wrote new file
allocation tables to the drives or screwed up the MBR's all in one
motion. The drives still show under properties as FAT32, and the
correct used size and free space show up, but everything is
gibberish. WHAT HAPPENED? I put everything back to normal and my
80gb drive back in my old comptuer but the drives are still messed
up. I tried a system restore to no success. One of the drives I ran
scandisk and it said there were 2 copies of the file allocation
table that do not match and when it tried to fix it, the problem
just looks worse. I downloaded Getdataback and it only recovered
30% of the files it appears with the shareware version.

Can anyone explain to me why windows xp decided to screw up the
harddrive structures? And the best solution to at least recovering
as much data as I can? Is there a way to view the 2 copies of the
file allocation table and try changing them to primary position
without deleting them? Could something else be fixed that was
messed up? Is file recovery software my best bet?
I would really appreciate any help recovering my data, and am
greatly disturbed by this fact of windows xp. Thanks.

Doesn't work that way. If it did - USB external drives would all be messed
up.

Something else messed up your data.

Look into the application "TestDisk"

 

[Mark Adams]

I installed windows XP home edition onto a 10gb NTFS harddrive on a computer
with an existing 120gb FAT32 drive almost full with data. Everything went
smooth and worked great for about a month. I tried taking an 80gb FAT32 drive
almost full of data and adding it to my computer changing the positions
around on the cables.

Upon the first boot after the new harddrive was added Windows XP appears to
have done something to both of my fat32 drives and now they show nothing but
gobly gook, I can't access my files. Just random characters show up. It looks
as if XP wrote new file allocation tables to the drives or screwed up the
MBR's all in one motion. The drives still show under properties as FAT32, and
the correct used size and free space show up, but everything is gibberish.
WHAT HAPPENED? I put everything back to normal and my 80gb drive back in my
old comptuer but the drives are still messed up. I tried a system restore to
no success. One of the drives I ran scandisk and it said there were 2 copies
of the file allocation table that do not match and when it tried to fix it,
the problem just looks worse. I downloaded Getdataback and it only recovered
30% of the files it appears with the shareware version.

Can anyone explain to me why windows xp decided to screw up the harddrive
structures? And the best solution to at least recovering as much data as I
can? Is there a way to view the 2 copies of the file allocation table and try
changing them to primary position without deleting them? Could something else
be fixed that was messed up? Is file recovery software my best bet?
I would really appreciate any help recovering my data, and am greatly
disturbed by this fact of windows xp. Thanks.

Boy, you've made a mess. Attach one hard drive into your computer at a time,
attach a USB hard drive and copy the data off using a Knoppix boot disk.

Reattach the drive that contains Windows and reboot. Attach the USB drive
and see if the data is readable. If it is, attach one of the original drives,
reformat it NTFS and copy the data back onto it from the USB drive. Repeat
with the other drive.

If the data is still unusable after copying to the external drive, you're
pretty much hosed.

 

[Arron]

Just to be clear.
Window XP is installed on a 10gb drive
the computer already had another 120gb fat32 drive that worked fine.
I only added another 80gb fat32 drive and when i rebooted, both fat32 drives
were garbled, and don't even show files, only one shows garbled folders.

 

[Mark Adams]

Just to be clear.
Window XP is installed on a 10gb drive
the computer already had another 120gb fat32 drive that worked fine.
I only added another 80gb fat32 drive and when i rebooted, both fat32 drives
were garbled, and don't even show files, only one shows garbled folders.

Just to be clear, follow the instructions in my previous post. If the data
is good, you're good. If the data is hosed, you're hosed.

 

[Paul Randall]

Comments inline

I installed windows XP home edition onto a 10gb NTFS harddrive on a
computer
with an existing 120gb FAT32 drive almost full with data. Everything went
smooth and worked great for about a month.

What is the brand and model and approximate year of the computer?
Is the BIOS the original shipped with the computer or has it been upgraded.
Are the drives all IDE, Sata, or a mix of the two?
For each drive, including CD/DVD drive, how were they jumpered at this time
(master, slave, cable select) and at what cable position were they plugged
in (middle or end of first or second motherboard IDE/Sata connector, as
listed in BIOS?

I tried taking an 80gb FAT32 drive
almost full of data and adding it to my computer changing the positions
around on the cables.

For each drive, including CD/DVD drive, list the same info for all the
drives at the time of this first boot.

At the time of this first boot, were either of the 80 & 100 GB drives
bootable on this or some other motherboard, or had they ever been bootable?

-Paul Randall

 

[HeyBub]

Just to be clear.
Window XP is installed on a 10gb drive
the computer already had another 120gb fat32 drive that worked fine.
I only added another 80gb fat32 drive and when i rebooted, both fat32
drives were garbled, and don't even show files, only one shows
garbled folders.

I can imagine this happening if:
a) You had all the drives strapped as "Master", and
b) You had a crappy disk controller that couldn't deduce something was amiss

 

[Bennett Marco]

I can imagine this happening if:
a) You had all the drives strapped as "Master", and
b) You had a crappy disk controller that couldn't deduce something was amiss

You mean that maybe "Arron" screwed up and it's really not XP's
fault??? <GASP>

 

[Gerry]

Arron

Drives or partitions of drives?


--


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Arron]

Paul,
The computer I built myself back in 2002.
It is a Gigabyte GA7dx motherboard.
the original arrangement was
primary IDE
master = 10gb drive with winxp
slave = 120gb drive with data (end of cable)
secondary IDE
master = cdrom (end of cable)
slave = cdrom

new configuration when it messed up
Primary
master = 10gb drive with winxp
slave = 120gb drive (end of cable)
secondary
master = 80gb drive (end of cable)
slave = cdrom

I believe all jumper settings were correct. I am curious how you use this
information to tell me how I could correct what happened to my 80 and 120gb
harddrives?

 

[Arron]

neither had ever been bootable, just data files, both 80 and 120gb drives
were previously formated and partitioned in win98se a couple years ago.

 

[Mark Adams]

Paul,
The computer I built myself back in 2002.
It is a Gigabyte GA7dx motherboard.
the original arrangement was
primary IDE
master = 10gb drive with winxp
slave = 120gb drive with data (end of cable)
secondary IDE
master = cdrom (end of cable)
slave = cdrom

new configuration when it messed up
Primary
master = 10gb drive with winxp
slave = 120gb drive (end of cable)
secondary
master = 80gb drive (end of cable)

This is still a "slave" drive even though it is in the master position on
the cable. You must set the jumper to "slave". The system can only have one
"master" hard drive.

 

[Paul Randall]

I was trying to find out what you meant by:

adding it to my computer changing the positions
around on the cables.

I was basically trying to coax enough information from you so that someone
with a better background than me could figure out what the root cause of
your problem is, and perhaps a remedy.

IDE drives can typically be pinned to be master or slave or use Cable
Select. Cable select means the drive at the end of the cable is the master
and the drive at the middle is the slave. If one drive is pinned as master
or slave and the other is pinned as cable select, then there could be
confusion. Depending on how the BIOS handles such confusion, perhaps your
symptoms could be the end result. Boot order is typically determined by
first by IDE cable number and then by master/slave. And partitioning can
also be a factor.

The more modern BIOSs can store some other specific order in which the hard
drives are tested for bootability. Your seven year old machine may have
that capability, especially if you have done a flash upgrade of the BIOS.
If the data drives had been bootable and the BIOS boot order was to choose
them first, then you may not have booted from the drive you intended to boot
from.

I don't have any suggestions on where to look for help on getting your data
back. The data recovery procedure you have already done has probably wiped
out the info in both original directories, meaning that it fixed them as
well as it could and probably made them the same. Commercial data recovery
is quite expensive but expensive is a relative term that has to take the
value of your data into account.

-Paul Randall

 

[DG]

This is still a "slave" drive even though it is in the master position
The system can only have one "master" hard drive.

<snip>

Not true, each IDE channel (Primary and Secondary) can have 1 master and 1
slave drive, hard disk or optical.

Let's say you have one onboard IDE controller with 2 channel and you add 2
PCI IDE controller cards with 2 channels each on your system, you could
have up to 6 drives set as "Master" on that system.