Hard Drive Problems

[MGalang]

Hi,
I need help w/ a hard drive issue. I installed a new master drive and decided to use the Western Digital EZ-Install instead of FDISK. It wanted to copy files from a bootable drive (my old one) to make itself bootable. So I partitioned it w/ the program and then saw it was copying the whole first partition of my old HD. I decided to cancel. So I continued to put a fresh install of Windows XP. Then I saw my whole old Hard drive w/ 3 partitions of information was reduced to 1 1.96 GB partition. My old drive is 30 GB!!! So I seem to have lost the information. I went to FDISK and saw that all the partitions had become NON-DOS 100% used drives. Not a good sign. I proceeded to delete them and make new ones. But it's restricting me to the 2 GB I saw before. It says there are 30 GB but the max size partition I can make is 2 GB. How can I get the rest of my HD back? I got EasyRecovery Professional software to try to get back my files but first I need to recognize my whole HD. Need Help Please!!!
Thanks,
-Michael

 

[DaiShan]

I am not sure what you are trying to do, are you trying to create 3 partitions, and install the OS on one?

 

[MGalang]

I installed a new hd and installed the OS on that one. I'm trying to "resurrect" the old hard drive and it's 3 partitions but it's only telling me I can make a partition upto 2 gb, which is not the 30 gb it really is.

 

[MGalang]

Ok, I got FDISK to say I have a 30 GB drive but Windows XP still sees the drive as a 1.96 GB unformatted drive. I have formatted through DOS twice, and that hasn't done anything. I tried re-installing WinXP. That has done nothing. Is there any way I can save this drive? I know it has to work cos it was just recently working and only went haywire when I installed the new drive and cancelled the copy process. Any help would be appreciative.
-Mike

 

[mee987]

go to control panel->administrative tools->computer management->storage->disk management
this is win2k/xp's fdisk, you could say... anyway, from here you can delete, create, and format partitions all without ever restarting

 

[MGalang]

the thing is WinXP doesn't recognize it correctly...I seem to have new problems now...It takes a really long time to start windows now and when it finally does boot, the mouse doesn't work...I tried a re-installation of WinXP but now the setup program doesn't work...after it loads drivers and just says starting windows and stalls