Windows dosen't show my 2nd hard drive

Ricki · 22 Apr 2006 at 22:18

I have just reformatted my PC and backed up a load of stuff onto an extra hard drive. I have just plugged it back in but it dosen't show up in My Computer. However, it does show up in the Device Manager. The only differenece I can see between all the tabs and properties between the hard drive that is recognised and the one that isn't is that under the Volumes tab the Unallocated space is the same as the Capacity for the one that isn't recognised and that it has no Volumes either (ie. no D

. This smacks me as XP see's the disk as unpartitioned.

I tried an old spare one that isn't formatted and that works fine, so any idea on what the problem is here? Whatever happens I need the data so any help of getting it to work correctly or just retreiving it would be helpful... All of the drives are SATA / SATA II, running Win XP Pro.

Six6siX · 22 Apr 2006 at 22:52

Did the disk that you installed XP from have any service packs installed? Also, what is the size of the hard drive(s)?

XP had a problem with dealing with unallocated space on large drives when using non service pack slipstreamed disks (I had a similar problem with my old PC).

If you have a SP1 or SP2 disk, try booting with the CD again and seeing if you can format the other partitions during setup.

Note, I may be barking up the entirely wrong tree here...

Luke · 22 Apr 2006 at 22:55

Chuck SP2 on there if it isn't and see what shows in Drive Management.

Ricki · 22 Apr 2006 at 23:07

I slipstreamed my copy of XP with SP2 so it installs it along with XP with fresh installs.

The size of the drive with the backup is 120Gb, the other one I tried was a 250Gb and the one I have windows on is a 80Gb.

Wouldn't formatting that drive erase the data on it?

Six6siX · 22 Apr 2006 at 23:10

Yes formatting would erase it. Not that useful...oops. Must read more carefully...

Do you know what file system the drive is? And do you have another machine to test and see if the drive is recognised?

chex · 23 Apr 2006 at 10:55

maybe its not mounted...

open disk management and see what it says,

Trigger · 23 Apr 2006 at 11:03

Start > Run > regedit.exe > HKLM > SYSTEM > MountedDevices > Post the contents of it here

Ricki · 23 Apr 2006 at 14:42

Ok, here's what's in my regedit there:

It looks like it sees it okay.

chex · 23 Apr 2006 at 15:14

check disk management

control panel -> computer management -> disk management

Ricki · 23 Apr 2006 at 15:49

I don't have the options of computer management > disk management - the closes thing I can find to that is the System > Hardware > Device Manager > Disk Drives option that I have already looked at...

These are what I get when I look at Disk Drives and populate the Volumes tab

The first is the drive I am trying to access, the second (Samsung) is my windows and the other Maxtor is the one that needs to be formatted before I can use (apparently)

chex · 23 Apr 2006 at 17:24

sorry

control panel -> administrative tools -> computer management -> disk management

check if it is mounted; if it is then you should be able to assign it a drive letter.

Ricki · 23 Apr 2006 at 18:19

OK, just checked, and below is what I saw. It's there, but the space is unallocated and no drive letter can be assigned. When right-clicking I get the options to create a new partition. It's Disk 2 on the picture.

Is it about time I look into recovering whats on the HDD as oppose to trying to get it to work / realise it has stuff on it? If it is that time, anyone got any suggestions on how to do that?