Installing same OS in two different disks

[Tikli]

Hello, everyone!
I have a problem. My local disk d is RAW. I experimented by installing an OS( windows 7 ) in d (while i already had windows xp 32-bit in C) . It worked but only somehow. Whenever i booted windows 7, the disk was fine, however when i booted windows xp (both are in dual boot) Local disk d was still raw. I figured that i should keep just one OS and that too in d.
I love xp too much and hate 7, so i want to install windows xp 32-bit in d and remove it from c. Can anyone help please? I have never done this before, that' s why i am a bit nervous.
Thanks in advance!

 

[Maziar]

This topic has been moved from the section CPU & Components to section Storage by Maziar

 

[Paperdoc]

First, I'd like to know whether you actually have two HDD units in your machine, or are the C: and D: drives just two Partitions on one HDD unit?

Next, there is real potential for confusion here. Normally, whenever you boot a machine, whatever HDD holds the OS you booted from is called C:, and the D: name is assigned to another HDD (or Partition). So, when you boot into the newly-installed Win 7, does it say that you are running Win 7 from C: or from D:? Your post says you placed it on the D: drive (that is what Win XP would have called your second HDD), but I'm not sure what Win 7 calls that drive once you boot from it.

Your problem is that a few data bits on the D: drive (as you call it) have been corrupted so that Windows cannot figure out how to use it. Commonly one finds that all the data and files on the RAW drive actually are there, and the faulty bits are only in the Partition Table or Directory management files. In these circumstances, what you need to do is a data recovery operation on that HDD. To do this you need data recovery software like Easeus or GetDataBack. These are not free, but usually they can do the job. Go to their websites (and any others you can find) and search specifically for the process to recover a RAW drive.

In general, such a process will read the "faulty" drive and allow you to copy from it to a completely separate drive all the files it can find. So you need a second drive with enough space to accept those files. Once you have recovered everything, you usually wipe the "faulty" drive and start fresh with it. The easiest way to do that often is simply to re-Install your OS from the CD, making sure at the beginning to Delete any old Partitions it finds so that the drive is empty and ready for new data.

Now, you MAY have introduced a problem with your efforts so far. You Installed Win 7 to the second (D drive when it already had a problem as a RAW Format drive. I am not at all clear how that was done. My first expectation is that the Win 7 Install process would have destroyed the existing Partition on the second HDD and created a new one in which to Install Win 7. In that way you would have lost all the data previously on that drive. However, you then say that, having done this, you still find that, if you boot from the C: drive into Win XP, it shows you that the second drive called D: is still RAW!

I wonder whether there was some empty Unallocated Space on your second HDD unit, so that the Win 7 Install process left the original contents of that unit (in the RAW Partition) untouched and created a new Partition for its Win 7 Install?

Using both Win XP and Win 7, you should examine carefully what Disk Management can tell you about the structures on your HDD units. We need to see how many physical HDD units you have, and what Partitions exist on each. If you are not familiar with Disk Management, post here and we'll guide you how to find out some important things.