r Logical Drive Suddenly disappears after a reboot on Windows XP, what to do?Tools?

[gwena]

Hi,

I have an old PC running Windows XP, I added another disk drive, a 200 GB Western Digital formatted with NTFS, the BIOS couldn’t recognize it but if I didn’t indicate it from the BIOS, then Windows XP was picking it up, and I could format it and use it without problem for a few months.
This week my laptop was connected to this old PC and I was transferring files from the laptop. An error similar to the following appeared on the old PC

“ The file xxxxxx.xxx is corrupted, you must run chkdsk /r (if I remember correctly) to correct the errors "

When I try to run it, it told me that I needed to reboot the machine first as the "partition"/Drive was locked (don't really remember),
I rebooted the machine, but then the logical drive was gone (I didn’t do anything else).

The drive is just a drive with one big NTFS partition (total size), with files but no OS

If I go back to Computer / Management / Disk Management
I can see my drive indicated as Free (Green)

I’ve tried to use Partition Magic 8.01 but it told me that there was an error with the drive
“Error#109, Partition ends after end of disk……..”
(I think that it might be due to the old BIOS)

I’ve put the drive in a USB2 Hard Drive Case and connected to my recent laptop (running Windows 2000),
and here I don’t have any more error with Partition Magic.
Partition Magic indicated the following for the Drive
- Unallocated 7.8 (MB) - Primary
- Extended 190 772 (MB) - Primary
- Unallocated 190 772 (MB) – Logical

I’ve tried the Partition Magic’s ‘Undelete Partition’ on the 3rd item of the list (there is not that option for the 2nd item), but it told me that there is no Partition to undelete.

I am looking for help on what I should do, should try, and must NOT do??

Some questions:

- Should I try Computer / Management / Disk Management and New Logical Drive to assign a letter to my drive, then use some tools to try to undelete the files? if yes which tool do you recommend?
- Should I try to use some tools first (without assigning a Logical Drive)? I read some other threads about lost partitions/files, and I’ve downloaded
trial of tools: VirtualLab Data Recovery 4.0, Recover MyFiles Data Recovery 2.6, Ontrack’s Easy Recovery Professional?
Which one should I try first??
- Is it a problem to try to fix the drive (NTFS) with another machine (the drive was in old PC running XP, it’s now in a USB2 case connected to a laptop running 2000)?
- Why Partition magic indicates 2 size of partition (a 190 772 and a 7.8 MB ones), when it was formatted as one?
- Why suddenly XP lost my partition, is the error might be due to the old BIOS?


Thanks a lot.

Gwena
South Africa

[LooseChippings]

The simplest way round this problem that I have found is to buy an PCI ATA card similar to this from my local PC shop...

Discount Computer Supplies Doncaster

[babahu]

I also had an old PC and a similar experience.

DONT CHECK DISK, DONT TRY TO FIX ANYTHING right now. NORTON and CHECKDISK are both dangerous if what I say below is true.

I'm guessing your old PC's BIOS does not support drives over 128gig. However, XP is able to read/write the first sectors (up to 128gig) fine and thus everything is fine until it fills up. Then when you start to write past the 128gig limit, it wraps around to the 0 area and starts to write over the first part of the disk, corrupting the FAT or other file info there. Or it may not do the corruption if you are lucky and just not write.

I.e. Win98 or XP is fooled since it cannot tell that your PC is old and does not support 48bit hard drive access (which you need for 200gigs).

The solution is to buy an add-in card like the Promise or Adaptec or other cheaper models ($29 to $69). They often come with RAID abilities but you can ignore that.
Keep your 200gig safe and dont use it until attached to an add-in card and then you can usually recover all/most of the info.
Hugh

Originally Posted by gwena

Hi,

I have an old PC running Windows XP, I added another disk drive, a 200 GB Western Digital formatted with NTFS, the BIOS couldn’t recognize it but if I didn’t indicate it from the BIOS, then Windows XP was picking it up, and I could format it and use it without problem for a few months.
This week my laptop was connected to this old PC and I was transferring files from the laptop. An error similar to the following appeared on the old PC

“ The file xxxxxx.xxx is corrupted, you must run chkdsk /r (if I remember correctly) to correct the errors "

When I try to run it, it told me that I needed to reboot the machine first as the "partition"/Drive was locked (don't really remember),
I rebooted the machine, but then the logical drive was gone (I didn’t do anything else).

The drive is just a drive with one big NTFS partition (total size), with files but no OS

If I go back to Computer / Management / Disk Management
I can see my drive indicated as Free (Green)

I’ve tried to use Partition Magic 8.01 but it told me that there was an error with the drive
“Error#109, Partition ends after end of disk……..”
(I think that it might be due to the old BIOS)

I’ve put the drive in a USB2 Hard Drive Case and connected to my recent laptop (running Windows 2000),
and here I don’t have any more error with Partition Magic.
Partition Magic indicated the following for the Drive
- Unallocated 7.8 (MB) - Primary
- Extended 190 772 (MB) - Primary
- Unallocated 190 772 (MB) – Logical

I’ve tried the Partition Magic’s ‘Undelete Partition’ on the 3rd item of the list (there is not that option for the 2nd item), but it told me that there is no Partition to undelete.

I am looking for help on what I should do, should try, and must NOT do??

Some questions:

- Should I try Computer / Management / Disk Management and New Logical Drive to assign a letter to my drive, then use some tools to try to undelete the files? if yes which tool do you recommend?
- Should I try to use some tools first (without assigning a Logical Drive)? I read some other threads about lost partitions/files, and I’ve downloaded
trial of tools: VirtualLab Data Recovery 4.0, Recover MyFiles Data Recovery 2.6, Ontrack’s Easy Recovery Professional?
Which one should I try first??
- Is it a problem to try to fix the drive (NTFS) with another machine (the drive was in old PC running XP, it’s now in a USB2 case connected to a laptop running 2000)?
- Why Partition magic indicates 2 size of partition (a 190 772 and a 7.8 MB ones), when it was formatted as one?
- Why suddenly XP lost my partition, is the error might be due to the old BIOS?


Thanks a lot.

Gwena
South Africa