I messed up my HD

[imported_chL]

Hi, so I re-installed Windows XP (and re-formatted) on my C: partition and left all my other ones alone. I booted into a pre-SP1 windows XP and my 300GB HD showed as 128 and not formatted. That's obviously because it's not SP2 yet but I didn't think of that and when I thought I'd lost my data I freaked out a bit. So I set the 300GB's 128GB to "active" to see if it would fix it but it didn't and now that i have SP2 I see the full HD but it's seperate in 2 and one is set to active and I can't access my data due to that. Any idea how to set it back to inactive or how to get my data or any other solution ?? Thanks a lot!

 

[pcgeek11]

Originally posted by: chL
Hi, so I re-installed Windows XP (and re-formatted) on my C: partition and left all my other ones alone. I booted into a pre-SP1 windows XP and my 300GB HD showed as 128 and not formatted. That's obviously because it's not SP2 yet but I didn't think of that and when I thought I'd lost my data I freaked out a bit. So I set the 300GB's 128GB to "active" to see if it would fix it but it didn't and now that i have SP2 I see the full HD but it's seperate in 2 and one is set to active and I can't access my data due to that. Any idea how to set it back to inactive or how to get my data or any other solution ?? Thanks a lot!

Is this on two seperate physical drives?

How did you set it as active?

The hard drive you have Windows installed on it the active drive as it wouldn't boot otherwise.

I think we need a better explaination of what exactly you did to assist you better.

pcgeek11

 

[imported_chL]

OK so here's what it si more precisely.

I have 2 HD's, one Seagate 160 GB with 4 partitions (C: being one of them), one Maxtor 300 GB with one partition for storage. I formatted C: and re-installed Windows expecting to have access to all my HD's (my 300 GB had backup of my settings and lots of other stuff), but when I booted into Windows (not updated yet so no SP) I saw only 128gb of the 300GB available on my Maxtor and I couldn't access it (Windows said it was in RAW and I needed to format it - I didn't). I went to disc manager and right-clicked on the 128GB which I could see of the maxtor and I set it to "active" trying to see if that would fix it. It didn't and meanwhile I was working on updgrading Windows. After the SP2 was installed I could see the whole 300GB Maxtor but it's seperated in the middle with the first half bgeing set to active and neither half being accessible to me. I went in partition magic and tried to see if I could fix it but in there it sees my Maxtor as one big block which is "DEFECTUOUS".

That should be more precise hopefully any and all help is greatly appreciated.

EDIT: The maxtor does not have an O/S on it. Only the Seagate does (and it works fine).

 

[imported_chL]

OK So I used Partition Table Doctor to repair the partition table of my Maxtor and can now access the first partition of this HD (it's the first 30GB) and that part is set to active. All files on it are good. The problem now is that the rest of the HD shows as I can't access it and is showed as type MBR instead of NTFS. How can I fix that???

 

[imported_chL]

I was able to set the first partition of the Maxtor back to inactive using Partition Table Doctor but it still doesn't pickup my 2nd partition on it when I try to fix the partition table. If anyone has any idea on how to restore that partition that would be great.

OH and I also have this weird error when I open Partition Table Dr. which is the following, and I can't get it fixed no matter what I do. "Hard Disk 2 Head is 86, Sector is 63. If PTD cannot find correct partition for you, you may try to access the CMOS setup program and change teh LBA mode setting on hard disk 2 to one of the following modes, and then run PTD to recover the partition.

(1)Auto mode (2)LBA mode (3)Large mode (4)CHS mode"

what's that??

 

[xgsound]

Here is a link to a thread by birdpup on disk issues including data recovery programs. http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...hreadid=1687590&enterthread=y&arctab=y It may be so old that the link won't work. If so, the thread is called "Hard Drive, Partition, Data Recovery and Diagnostic" and is in the "Technical support" catagory. If you use search and include archived messages it will show up.

He lists about 8 recovery programs and some are free if memory serves.


Jim