Need help with my harddrive

[BBock727]

I have a 250gig harddrive that I use only for storage. I recently set up a dual boot of Win XP SP2 and Vista Ultimate on my Master Drive. Until last night, while in Vista I was able to see the contents of this drive under Drive Letter G:. Last night my computer froze under VISTA and when it reboot, the computer ran chkdsk before starting VISTA. Now, I can still see drive G:, but the contents are not available.

Ironically, i then booted into Win XP and tried to see if i can access the files. I have no problem accessing them in Win XP. Is there some sort of index that Vista uses that can be corrupted and how can I fix it? It doesn't make sense to me that Vista just stopped reading the drive (but still knows its physically there, b/c it shows up as G: still in MY COMPUTER), while Win XP has no problems reading the contents.


Thanks in advance!!

 

[sieistganzfett]

i never used or even tried vista to date, so below is what i would do anyways since all os are similar to a point.

are you saying the G: drive opens in windows vista, but shows no files, no errors, as if it were a cleanly formatted drive? even the free space on the drive makes it look blank when you open it? or does an error message appear when you go to open the G: drive under vista that has the data on that external drive?

since it's external, and we know you can access the files in xp still, when your in vista, try to disconnect the drive so the G is no longer there, then reconnect it so vista re-mounts the G: drive, so you can hopefully access it. i really need more info to help further.

 

[BBock727]

My storage drive is not external, its an ide drive actually... and no i cannot access teh drive. Although it shows up in device manager and my computer if i click on it i get an error, cannot access.

i went to device manager and uninstalled the drive. rebooted vista and let it auto detect. Had the same problem.

 

[sieistganzfett]

all vista says is that it "cannot access" thats just as bad as xp when it says that stuff.. try doing a chkdsk /f on it from vista, the partition is NTFS right? can you access the drive via "computer management" in vista, to see its partition info?

 

[BBock727]

 

[BBock727]

Originally posted by: sieistganzfett
all vista says is that it "cannot access" thats just as bad as xp when it says that stuff.. try doing a chkdsk /f on it from vista, the partition is NTFS right? can you access the drive via "computer management" in vista, to see its partition info?

ill check in an hour, right now im in XP copying my drive over to another "in case my drive is failing" (which i doubt).

Im amazed at what could have caused this.

 

[sieistganzfett]

i dont think it's failing, i think its something security related in vista (very good idea to backup the data anyways before moving forward), did you enable data protection under vista, like BitLocker? but the drive shows under xp still, so idk if that is it.

 

[BBock727]

Says exactly G:\ is not accessable, access denied

 

[BBock727]

And if i try to do error check in properties i get "the disk check could not be performed because Windows cannot access the disk."

Any help would be appreciated, Im out of ideas

 

[sieistganzfett]

would this be accurate at all to fixing it?

In the control panel, open Folder Options and click the View tab. Check the radio button to "show hidden files and folders". Click ok out of the Window. This will show all files and folders you normally would not see. Second, if you try and access a folder where you get an access denied message, right click the folder and go to properties, security, and then to advanced. Click on the Owner tab and then the edit button at the bottom. Select your account and then click on replace permission to all subfolders. This should let you get to your files that are not accessible.

http://www.blogcastrepository.com/blogs...an_tucker/archive/2006/11/03/2558.aspx

here are ideas to take ownership of the files under vista, maybe they can help? what kind of a user mode are you in under vista? did that change at all since that problem occured?

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Window...2-aee7-4fed-8316-89114dc973031033.mspx

 

[BBock727]

sieistganzfett, sounded like a great idea, i believed it would work... but it didnt. Im at a loss. I backed up the files, i think im just gonna reformat the drive and recopy them.

 

[BBock727]

hmmm when i go to format, it says drive is in use. this is weird

 

[BBock727]

sieistganzfett you rock. I finally got it to work while screwing around with the security. I wish they would just take this security ****** out of vista, it just causes problems!!!


Well thanks a bunch! You were a big help