Recognition of a hard drive in Windows XP

[Alvin.C]

Hi,

When I do list disk, I do see a Disk 0 and Disk 1. I can only assume that they are the two hard drives, since I have removed every other drive (removable, DVD, CD) from the computer.

List disk will also list memory card readers, even if there are no media inserted. Are both disks reported as having a size in diskpart when you list them?

If Windows isn't detecting your old hard drive, follow the steps in my previous post and check the BIOS check that both IDE controllers are enabled, and whether the BIOS is detecting the old hard drive.

 

[Alvin.C]

Okies. I have just read your addition to your latest post.

It would appear I'm afraid that there's something wrong with the old hard drive itself, and it's preventing Windows from successfully detecting the drive and mounting its volumes.

Since you can't check the disk for errors in Windows, you'll have to use a 3rd party program which is able to fix errors on the disk, and/or read files on a disk, regardless of the file system and it's state. See: Free Data Recovery, File and Partition Recovery, Undelete and Unformat Utilities (thefreecountry.com) . The freeware program TestDisk may be able to assist you. Also, the Ultimate Boot CD (also free) has many hard disk diagnostic tools which may help you get the old drive working again.

Another recommendation is Spinrite, which is a popular utility for fixing problematic hard drives. It's not free though, costing $89.