Major Hard Drive Problem

[AND_YOU_ARE]

I bought a new sata hard drive. But inorder to use it I have to replace one of my smaller sata drives. No problem. I disconnect the smaller sata, connect the new sata. Boot the pc up, and format, and load my files on it. Now I want to power off switch back the drives, so I can get all my files off the smaller sata. When I boot back up the drive doesnt show up in windows explorer, and in disk management, the drive shows up as a volume not assigned. I assign it the old drive name and letter, and then it says it needs to be reformated. But it was already formatted, and working. I dont want to loose my data. Its important data. I need to know what I have to do to retreive it. Thanks for any help, I really need it.

 

[Techguru75]

Let's get some clarification, what does this mean:

"Now I want to power off switch back the drives, so I can get all my files off the smaller sata.

You have how many drives in the computer, 2?

 

[AND_YOU_ARE]

I'll try to be more specific.

I bought a new WD400gb drive to replace my Samsung 160gb drive. I dont have any more sata connections, so to create a partition on the WD drive I have to disconnect the Samsung drive. So I powered off, and switched the drive, unluging the Samsung, and plugging in the WD. I boot into windows, and run through the process of creating a partition, and formatting. After the format I take all the files from a WD 160gb drive and move them on to the 400gb drive. So I can then hook up the orginal Samsung 160gb drive and more those files to the empty WD 160gb drive. Then disconnect that drive, and store it away, having its files on the WD160, and having more space with the WD400.

Thats about it.

Now in disk manager, It comes up as an unformatted hard drive. I cant revive the volume I previsouly had, but I know all my data is there.

What do I need to do to have window access it, with out deleting the volume, or reformatting it? Would a program like Partition Magic help?

 

[Techguru75]

Yeah, I would grab a program like Partition Magic, but Ghost would work a lot better if you have a way of getting a hold of that.

Check your bios and make sure that it didn't set your new drive as the primary boot device first though.

Something didn't work right on your new drive there. Try to set it up as a boot drive again. You should be able to copy your files onto the new drive from within Windows. Just designate which drive to boot off of in the bios each time.

 

[AND_YOU_ARE]

I have both ghost and partition magic.

I dont think the WD400 is a boot drive. My system goes as follows:

WD80gb - System (os) (sata)
Samsung 160gb - Storage(sata)
Samsung 160gb - Storage (sata)
Samsung 160gb - Storage (sata)
WD320gb - Storage (IDE)

(That was how it was before)



WD80gb - System (os) (sata)
WD400gb- Storage(sata)
Samsung 160gb - Storage (sata)
Samsung 160gb - Storage (sata)
WD320gb - Storage (IDE)

(This is how I would like it with the new drive)



All I wanted to do was to switch the data from one to the other. The only one that the bios boots is the WD80. Windows and such booted just fine every time.

What procedure are you suggesting for the use of ghost and magic? Should I copy the unaccessable partition to another drive that has a partition accessable by windows? And then hopefully be able to access those files?

My new drive works, I assigned it a different letter than the samsung 160 I am trying to replace. But now the samsung 160 isnt being recognized as an ntfs hard drive.

 

[Techguru75]

So, you copied all your files from your WD80 onto your 160gig drive and now you want to put those files on your 400gig?

Hmmm.....here's the procedure I would use.

To put all files from your WD80 onto your 400gig drive I would create a folder on the 160 and move all files you wanted to keep from the WD80 to there (hopefully you have enough room). Then I would install the 400gig as a boot drive and put windows on it and load up all your drivers. Then after windows installation access the files from the 160gig drive and copy or move them to your new 400gig drive.

If you want to clone the drive...

Make a Ghost image to your 160gig drive and then put that image on the 400gig. Of course, Ghost will make an 80gig partition and then partition the rest of the drive out I believe.

I experienced a similar issue when I swapped out SATA drives and had an ATA 100 drive in the system. For some reason the bios didn't want to automaticly detect the SATA drive as a boot device, i had to go into the BIOS and tell it which drive to use for the boot device.

EDIT: I just realized what you did wrong. You loaded your drive's information onto your new drive, but it didn't copy the boot.ini file to that drive. It won't copy that portion of your drive to the new drive. You need to clone the drive with Ghost to do that. I tried using another program to do that but it didn't work, Ghost was the only one reliable enough to recommend.

 

[AND_YOU_ARE]

Uh, I dont quite follow what you are saying, maybe because I did something else than what you think I did. Im not doing anything with my WD80, that is my primary and boot drive with XP Pro on it. I am leaving that drive alone. Instead I am trying to get one of my satas I had previsouly installed to be recognized by windows. I disconnected the drive because I had to install my new WD400.

WD80gb - System (os) (sata)
Samsung 160gb - Storage(sata)
Samsung 160gb - Storage (sata)
Samsung 160gb - Storage (sata)
WD320gb - Storage (IDE)

Those are the hard drives I have in my case before I bought the WD400. Since I am limited to four serial ports I have to disconnect one of the sata drives to connect the new WD400sata drive. I did not do anything with my WD80 drive with my os on it. I left that one alone.

What I did do was power off, and remove one of my Samsung 160 drives. It happened to be drive letter I. I unplugged that drive, and then plugged in my new WD400. I booted windows from the WD80 drive, (my primary os) and continued to format the new WD400. Once formatted I transfered the files from one of my other Samsungs (drive letter H) to the new WD400 drive (drive letter K). I did this because after I transfer the full 160gbs of drive H to drive K I am going to switch out the WD400 (K) with the older Samsung 160 (I). Then I can transfer the files from I to H. Once I is empty, it will go in my box of computer parts. And the new WD400 (K) will be perminatly installed.

My problem began when I had completed formatting the new WD400 (K) and transfered all of the files from drive H to it. I then powered off, and switched the connections on the samsung 160 and the WD400. I powered back up, and the samsung 160 (I) was not recognized by window, or disk manager.

Disk manager tells me that it is a drive that needs to be foramtted to be used. I know that there are files on it, in the ntfs format. I need to know how to make windows recognize the files and such.

I dont have any ideas how to do this.

I have used ghost to clone my boot drive to another drive. Im not unfamilar with that process. But what I am trying to do is totaly different.

 

[Techguru75]

These files that are supposed to be on your new drive, do you have those files backed up to another drive or a copy on one of the other drives?

If so, you could try reformatting the new drive like it wants you to do and then moving them back to the drive again.

Perhaps the size of the drive is an issue as well. It might not be recognizaing it correctly because it's so large. Do you have that fix installed?

 

[AND_YOU_ARE]

I dont have those files on that drive backed up, thats why I need to get them back. The drive is the same size as it has been, I didnt do anything with that at all. Just unplugged it and reconnected it.

Im thinking my stuff is gone .

 

[AND_YOU_ARE]

Any ideas? The only thought I have is to clone the drive in question to an empty drive, already formatted, and then see if I can access my data. If not than I dont have any ideas, and have lost everything.