This drive is not formatted......

[chillmike]

I hope this is posted in the right section, if not mods feel free to move it.


So my problem is a bit confusing and I'll try and keep it as simple as possible. Recently my motherboard ended up going the way of the buffalo so I had to replace it but I kept my hard drives which I'll call drive A, drive B and drive C.

DRIVE A: My primary drive that I've been using for a while now (maybe 3 years) is a SEAGATE 320 gig SATA. I've been using it to boot/host XP Pro.

DRIVE B: A secondary drive that no OS is installed on is a SEAGATE 1TB SATA.

DRIVE C: A drive I've had in my case for quite some time now but haven't been using is a Western Digital 80gig IDE drive.


So after rebuilding my rig with new motherboard I hooked up the drives as I've always had them A as the primary booting XP, B as a secondary drive and C not hooked up but still inside the case (I can be a bit lazy). Everything is hooked up and ready to go, so I boot it up and I end up in an endless reboot cycle no matter if I choose to boot into safemode or last known working configuration.

I decide that maybe I virus or some malware is not letting me boot up into safe mode. So I install XP on to drive C after formatting it NTFS. Drive C is now the first boot option and connected via IDE. Both drive A and B are hooked up via SATA. Windows boots up and starts with no problems. So after letting it settle down, I go to check out my other two drives in the "My computer" window. Both drives show up as "Local Drive" but when I double click/try to explore either drive it comes up with a message saying "Drive is not formatted, do you wish to format it now?" or something along those lines. Of course I don't want to format either drive because I'll lose all of my data, hence the reason I broke out the old crusty IDE drive.

I'll place this again here to help make it easy to follow.

DRIVE A: My primary drive that I've been using for a while now (maybe 3 years) is a SEAGATE 320 gig SATA. I've been using it to boot/host XP Pro.

DRIVE B: A secondary drive that no OS is installed on is a SEAGATE 1TB SATA.

DRIVE C: A drive I've had in my case for quite some time now but haven't been using is a Western Digital 80gig IDE drive.


So I had picked up a copy of Windows 7 and I figured maybe that'll pick up the two drives as they should be seen. So I installed 7 over XP on Drive C, again no hang ups, no problems but same thing happens I go to my computer and both drives A & B say the same thing as they did in XP. I've checked under disk management and they both say healthy but format is "RAW".

So I'm not sure what exactly is going on here. Ultimately my goal is to take what is on drive A and shift it over to drive B. Then reformat drive A and install Windows 7 on it and go back to using Drive B as my backup and sort of forget about Drive C.

I understand that there is a chance that Drive A is corrupt though I suspect it isn't but what really puzzles me is that Drive B is having the same problems.

Sorry for the horribly long post, and if I can make this any easier to follow let me know and I'll do my best to explain. Thanks again everyone.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

Are you upgrading the OS or doing a "fresh" install?

Try one drive at a time. Pick your drive that you want as the boot drive. Do a full format and then install your OS. Check your boot sequence in the BIOS. After you've successfully created your boot drive, then go on to drive B and C.

 

[chillmike]

Are you upgrading the OS or doing a "fresh" install?

Try one drive at a time. Pick your drive that you want as the boot drive. Do a full format and then install your OS. Check your boot sequence in the BIOS. After you've successfully created your boot drive, then go on to drive B and C.

I can't format the drive yet that's the whole point I'd lose all my data, that's why I'm using this old drive (Drive C) to try and access the other two that have data on them that I want. Man this whole thing is confusing. Anyways did try your other suggestion only using Drive C (boot drive) and one of the other two and here's my results.

Trying one drive at a time reveals that
when A is plugged in Drive A is Healthy Active, Primary Partition but only has 128GB (again it's a 320gb)
when B is plugged in Drive B is Healthy Active, Primary Partition but only has 128GB (This is the 1TB)

So that's a bit odd. Neither of them are 128gb drives and neither of them have even roughly that amount of space left on them.

So yeah still looking for some other ideas. Thanks for the help though appreciate it.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

Okay. Do you have a USB drive with an OS on it? You can try to boot off that also.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

If none of these drives can be "wiped clean", buy one of these and connect it to the eSATA or USB port on another PC.

hhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153071

Copy the stuff you need off it to the other computers HD. Wipe the HD you just cleaned off, put it in your box w/ new MoBo and install the OS.

Wehn done, add the other two drives, tho frankly, I'd toss the after getting the data off or save for external backup in the BlacX

 

[chillmike]

Okay. Do you have a USB drive with an OS on it? You can try to boot off that also.

Yeah I do have an external drive available that I can put on OS on but it's a USB drive not eSATA or eIDE, that being said I can boot the computer up just fine with my old drive it's getting to the information on the other two drives that I'm having trouble getting. Maybe I'm missing something in what you're saying hahaha.

If none of these drives can be "wiped clean", buy one of these and connect it to the eSATA or USB port on another PC.

hhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153071

Copy the stuff you need off it to the other computers HD. Wipe the HD you just cleaned off, put it in your box w/ new MoBo and install the OS.

Wehn done, add the other two drives, tho frankly, I'd toss the after getting the data off or save for external backup in the BlacX

That's definitely an idea because then it would treat them as a USB drive which is being recognized right now. I was hoping to be able to do this with a fix but if nothing else can fix it this might be the way to go. I'm about 90% positive that my 1TB drive (DRIVE B) is fine but the other drive I'm only about 50/50 on. Hmmm will definitely take this into consideration, if anyone else might know of a software type of fix I'd still be really interested in hearing it

Thanks again everyone for the help. I've been going nuts trying to find an answer.

 

[Paperdoc]

Hold on, the big clue is that both large drives show up as 128 GB. I would bet that, when you fresh-installed Win XP on the old 80 GB unit, you used a version that had NO Service Packs installed. That version did NOT have what is known as "48-bit LBA Support", and hence cannot handle any drive over 128 GB. On the other hand, Win 7 certainly does support such large drives. So, with Win 7 installed on the 80 GB and NOT XP, do the two large drives STILL show that size? They should not. Since both are SATA the hardware support for 48-bit LBA is there, and Win 7 has it also, so in that OS you ought to be able to handle the large drives just fine.

By the way, how have you set the mobo BIOS's SATA port modes? Under Win 7 you ought to ba able to use IDE (or PATA) Emulation, native SATA, or AHCI - take your choice. But in XP you would have to use IDE Emulation unless you loaded a SATA or AHCI driver into Windows.

 

[chillmike]

You are correct in assuming that the XP I installed did not have any service packs on it. I believe I installed SP2 and went right to Windows 7.

Right now yes I've got the 80GB running my OS on it and the 1TB running but it still gets recognized as 128GB in Disk Management. Raw Healthy Active Partition.

Going into BIOS I get the following information:

Standard CMOS Features

IDE Channel 0 Master: [SONY DVD RW DRU-5] My DVD player jumpered to Cable Select
IDE Channel 0 Slave [WDC WD800JB-.....] My 80GB hard drive jumpered to Cable Select
IDE Channel 1 Master: [None] and doesn't auto detect anything
IDE Channel 1 Slave: [None] and doesn't auto detect anything


Integrated Peripherals

OnChip IDE Channel: [Enabled]
OnChip SATA Controller: [Enabled]
OnCHip SATA Type: [Native IDE] With RAID and AHCI options as well
OnChip SATA Port4/5 Type [IDE] "Blued out" and not selectable until I change the OnChip SATA Type.


What's strange to me is that the 1TB drive doesn't show up at all under the standard CMOS page. I clearly remember it being listed when everything was working correctly.

Does this clue you in on anything else? Anything else I can do to try and clear things up? Plug in both larger drives at once or something?

Thanks again for the help!

 

[Paperdoc]

Let me work through some of the history here. The first major stage was replacement of a failed mobo, using the same HDD units from the old system - a 320 GB unit with XP Pro installed, and a 1 TB newer unit with no OS (BUT, I assume, does contain useful data). At boot-up the whole thing did not work. That does not surprise me. The Win XP installed on the 320 GB drive had a whole bunch of drivers for the devices built into the original mobo, and none of the ones for the new mobo's devices. In this situation almost ALL boot attempts fail. The easiest solution, and it does not always work, is to boot from the original XP Pro Install disk and do a Repair Install. That procedure basically inventories all the actual devices on the current (new) mobo and all the drivers already installed in the 320 GB boot drive, and then tries to fix all the mis-matches. If it works, when you reboot from the HDD the revised XP on the boot drive actually does load and run successfully. You did not do that.

Your next alternative was a fresh install of Win XP Pro (original edition without 48-bit LBA Support) on the old 80 GB HDD, and that worked. However, you then attempted to access two SATA drives much larger than the capabilities of that version of XP, and it gave you error messages. Fortunately you ignored their advice to reformat!

Next attempt was to replace that XP install with a Win 7 new install. Now, THAT Windows most certainly should have been able to handle those two larger SATA disks, and yet it said they had a "RAW" format.

Then later you say that with the new Win 7 running, both larger drives are accessible, but their size appears to be only 128 GB each. What about their data files? Are they all there - I mean, ALL of them? Can you use all of them?

Maybe feed us some more info. What mobo do you have - maker and model number? Maybe we can look at its manual and figure things out. Which mobo ports are being used for which drives? I see you have the 80 GB and your optical drive sharing IDE0. By the way, with both set to Cable Select the Master and Slave functions are determined by which ribbon cable connector is plugged into which unit. As a general rule it is better to have the HDD be the Master, which means it should be using the END connector on the cable, and the middle connector into the optical drive. If you do switch this, make sure to re-adjust the Boot Priority Sequence in BIOS Setup. My own preference is to use the optical drive as first device (even though it should be the IDE0 Slave device), the HDD with the OS on it (the 80 GB IDE Master) as the second device, and NO others for now.

Which mobo SATA port is each of the large drives attached to? I am assuming neither is done as a USB device in an external case. How many mobo SATA ports are there? This is where access to the right manual (via mobo make and model) is important, because different mobos had different ways of integrating IDE, SATA, and second SATA controllers. I'm pursuing this because you say both that the two SATA drives are "seen" in Win 7 but with the wrong size, and that the BIOS does NOT "see" the 1 TB unit. That does not seem to make sense.

Oh, I just remembered a point. AFTER installing Win 7 you are supposed to run a utility on a CD that comes with your mobo to install all the device drivers for your mobo in the Win 7 install. Without doing that your Win 7 only has plain-Jane drivers and can't deal with things properly. Did you do that? There should be a section in your mobo manual on the details of this. Some people also would advise strongly that, once this is done, you go to the mobo maker's website and download and install their LATEST driver packages because they usually are better than the ones that came on the CD.

Let us know some more info and we'll help to work through further.

 

[chillmike]

Let me work through some of the history here. The first major stage was replacement of a failed mobo, using the same HDD units from the old system - a 320 GB unit with XP Pro installed, and a 1 TB newer unit with no OS (BUT, I assume, does contain useful data). At boot-up the whole thing did not work. That does not surprise me. The Win XP installed on the 320 GB drive had a whole bunch of drivers for the devices built into the original mobo, and none of the ones for the new mobo's devices. In this situation almost ALL boot attempts fail. The easiest solution, and it does not always work, is to boot from the original XP Pro Install disk and do a Repair Install. That procedure basically inventories all the actual devices on the current (new) mobo and all the drivers already installed in the 320 GB boot drive, and then tries to fix all the mis-matches. If it works, when you reboot from the HDD the revised XP on the boot drive actually does load and run successfully. You did not do that.

Correct on all accounts here. I did try the Repair install after the rebuild (with new mobo,ram,cpu) and it said something to the affect of "Data on drive is too corrupt" and this would be on the 320gb drive.

Your next alternative was a fresh install of Win XP Pro (original edition without 48-bit LBA Support) on the old 80 GB HDD, and that worked. However, you then attempted to access two SATA drives much larger than the capabilities of that version of XP, and it gave you error messages. Fortunately you ignored their advice to reformat!

Correct here, the drives would show up as raw and only 128gb a piece. Trying to access them in disk management provided the same results.

Next attempt was to replace that XP install with a Win 7 new install. Now, THAT Windows most certainly should have been able to handle those two larger SATA disks, and yet it said they had a "RAW" format.

Yeah that was my plan, I figured I'd give Win 7 a shot at finding them properly at the right amount of storage size and files accessible.

Then later you say that with the new Win 7 running, both larger drives are accessible, but their size appears to be only 128 GB each. What about their data files? Are they all there - I mean, ALL of them? Can you use all of them?

This was probably an error in me trying to explain things. What I meant was that they show up under "my computer" but again only as a "local drive" trying to open/explore only gets me as far as the format this disk message unfortunately. So I don't have access to data on either the 320gb drive or the 1tb drive.f

Maybe feed us some more info. What mobo do you have - maker and model number? Maybe we can look at its manual and figure things out. Which mobo ports are being used for which drives? I see you have the 80 GB and your optical drive sharing IDE0. By the way, with both set to Cable Select the Master and Slave functions are determined by which ribbon cable connector is plugged into which unit. As a general rule it is better to have the HDD be the Master, which means it should be using the END connector on the cable, and the middle connector into the optical drive. If you do switch this, make sure to re-adjust the Boot Priority Sequence in BIOS Setup. My own preference is to use the optical drive as first device (even though it should be the IDE0 Slave device), the HDD with the OS on it (the 80 GB IDE Master) as the second device, and NO others for now.

Sure thing. The new motherboard is a Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P. Not that I think it matters but I'll throw in I'm running an AMD Phenom 2 with a 2gb stick of Mushkin ram. The motherboard only has one IDE port which is why I've got the DVD drive as the Master on cable select and the 80gb drive with Win 7 slaved on cable select because the cable will only reach that far up if it's done in that configuration. Though I might be able to try and shift some things around and switch it up. Agreed on the BIOS boot that's normally how I have my systems set up.

Which mobo SATA port is each of the large drives attached to? I am assuming neither is done as a USB device in an external case. How many mobo SATA ports are there? This is where access to the right manual (via mobo make and model) is important, because different mobos had different ways of integrating IDE, SATA, and second SATA controllers. I'm pursuing this because you say both that the two SATA drives are "seen" in Win 7 but with the wrong size, and that the BIOS does NOT "see" the 1 TB unit. That does not seem to make sense.

Let's see I only have the 80gb in the only IDE port right now as I stated earlier and right now. There are 6 SATA connects on the mobo and right now I only have the 1TB unit connected. It is plugged into SATA port 1 which is really the second port (ports 0/1/2/3/4/5). When I first tried win 7 with both drives I had the 320gb unit plugged into SATA 0 and the TB drive plugged into SATA 1.

Here's a link to the manual (bear in mind this is a direct link to the 8.5mb pdf file) http://america.gigabyte.com.tw/FileList/Manual/mb_manual_ga-ma770t-ud3p_e.pdf

You can see the layout of the SATAs on page 24.

Oh, I just remembered a point. AFTER installing Win 7 you are supposed to run a utility on a CD that comes with your mobo to install all the device drivers for your mobo in the Win 7 install. Without doing that your Win 7 only has plain-Jane drivers and can't deal with things properly. Did you do that? There should be a section in your mobo manual on the details of this. Some people also would advise strongly that, once this is done, you go to the mobo maker's website and download and install their LATEST driver packages because they usually are better than the ones that came on the CD.

Just installed the ones from the disk and no changes in the situation and I'm typing this as I'm doing your suggestions, so checking their website for drivers now.....Installed the drivers from the website and I checked BIOS and it doesn't appear anything has changed.

Let us know some more info and we'll help to work through further.

Thanks so much for all the help and being patient! If there is any other information let me know and I'll post it up!

 

[Paperdoc]

OK, most of this I'll probably get to tomorrow. But just quickly on the IDE Master and Salve situation: if that is the best way to make the cables reach and it all works anyway, leave it alone - do NOT change it. The "general rule" of having the HDD perform the Master function merely is a preventive because SOME optical drives can't do that job properly with a HDD as Slave. But it appears your is doing OK, so let's leave it that way.

 

[chillmike]

OK, most of this I'll probably get to tomorrow. But just quickly on the IDE Master and Salve situation: if that is the best way to make the cables reach and it all works anyway, leave it alone - do NOT change it. The "general rule" of having the HDD perform the Master function merely is a preventive because SOME optical drives can't do that job properly with a HDD as Slave. But it appears your is doing OK, so let's leave it that way.

No problem. I'll leave the IDE cable alone.

Just a quick minor update, not sure if it means anything but I thought I'd include it anyways. I happened to go in to BIOS after installing the drivers from the website and noticed that my 1TB now shows up in BIOS down at I believe IDE Master 03 or 04 but still the same under my computer or disk management. Thought I'd put this down while I still remembered it!

Again thanks so much.

 

[Paperdoc]

OK, so that last info solves one nagging issue - why did that 1 TB unit NOT show in BIOS? Well, it does. What many mobo's BIOS messages do is label the SATA ports as if they were just more IDE ports, which is a bit confusing. The are not, and they are not being treated that way, but the messages use the term anyway. A big clue to that (besides the fact it never says "SATA port...") is that real IDE ports will always show as IDE0 and IDE1 (OR Primary and Secondary IDE port), and always have BOTH Master and Slave positions (even if there is no device connected to one of those); SATA ports in such a system will start to show up as later-numbered IDE ports, and all of them will have ONLY Masters (because there cannot be a second or "Slave" on a one-device port).

Now, we are still left with the puzzle of why the large drives both show up as only 128 GB sizes. Let us try a three-step examination and attempt to fix with low risk. I propose we use Disk Management to examine what Win 7 thinks is the HDD allocation of space. Then we'll make use of the fact that your one HDD that is working is on the IDE port, as is the optical drive, and deliberately uninstall all your SATA devices, then try to add them back on again and re-examine.

First, shut down and reconnect the 320 GB unit to SATA0, just so that we can have it available to remove later in Device Manager. Then reboot into Windows. I think you know how to get into Disk Management, but just quickly: Click on Start, then in the menu RIGHT-click on My computer and click on Manage. In the resulting window expand Storage if necessary and choose Disk Management. Now on the right you'll have two panes, and each of them scrolls so you can see all the stuff. The UPPER right pane shows you all the drives Windows is happy to use right now. The LOWER right pane shows all the hardware disk-like devices, some of which Windows may NOT be able to use yet. For each of these, there will be one horizontal rectangular block that is sub-divided into other blocks. At the left end on one major block will be a small sub-block with the device identifier like "Disk_0", its total size, and some other info. To the right of that will be one or more sub-blocks, each representing one Partition on that device. If ALL of the device's space is allocated to a single Partition, then there will be only one sub-block of this type. Now, each Partition will be used by Windows as a separate "drive" with its own letter name. So each of these blocks will have a letter name, a size, and some info about status. For example, your smaller IDE drive you're using now to boot from should have a left-hand label block that says it is Disk 0, a Basic disk with size of about 75 GB, and is online. There likely is only one large block to the right saying it is the OS unit called C: with the 75 GB size, and Healthy, etc. There will be a big block for your optical drive, too.

Now look at the 1 TB unit. To the right of its label block (Check what that says - does it have the size right at about 940 GB?), what do you see? Is there just one block taking up all of the space with a size and name? What are they? Or, is there one block with a size of only about 128 GB, then another much larger block to the right labeled "Unallocated Space"? Or, are there even more blocks? What do they all say? When one or more Partitions are created on a HDD that use up LESS than the full disk space, whatever is NOT assigned to a Partition is usually at the right-hand end of this main block and called "Unallocated Space". It can be used to create a new Partition, or sometimes to expand an existing contiguous Partition.

The information shown here in Disk Management tells you what Windows understands from the data in the Partition Table on the HDD. I am hoping that this part of Disk Management can see the 1 TB unit correctly as one large Partition of about 940 GB with no Unallocated Space to the right. That would indicate that the Partition Table is good, and there is simply a problem in Windows' Registry info.

So far you've looked at some details of the 1 TB HDD unit attached to SATA1. Look at the details for the 320 GB unit also, and note them down. Now simply exit from Disk Management. Now I suggest you go through Start ... Control Panel ... System ... Hardware ... Device Manager to get to the Disk Drives. Be careful and don't do anything to your 80 GB boot drive on the IDE port. But for the SATA ports, right-click on each drive and choose to Remove this device - both its driver and the hardware itself, probably as one step per drive. Exit out of here and shut down. Disconnect both SATA drives. Boot into the BIOS Setup screens and Disable the SATA ports (BIOS Integrated Peripherals, manual p. 48). Save and Exit, and you should boot into Windows to find you only have two IDE devices - a 80 GB boot HDD and an optical drive - and no other storage devices. Now shut down again.

Reconnect only one of the SATA drives - I suggest the 320 GB unit on SATA0 - and boot into BIOS Setup so you can Enable the SATA port again (manual p. 48), setting SATA Type to Native IDE. (NOTE: I am assuming here that the 320 GB unit has Win XP Pro installed originally in this mode, and not as an AHCI mode drive unit with an extra driver installed. IF it actually WAS an AHCI unit in the old machine, then set the mode here to AHCI. Setting to Native IDE mode here will PREVENT you from using the last two SATA ports (4 and 5) according to the manual.) This setting is just so that, if all works as planned, you can use the 320 GB unit as a boot device to run your original Win XP. BUT, if you plan to migrate directly to Win 7 anyway, this won't be the final configuration. Go then to Advanced BIOS Features (manual p. 44) and set the boot priority to optical then 80 GB IDE drive and NOT the 320 GB SATA drive. Anyway, Save and Exit Setup and it should boot into Windows 7 from the 80 GB unit. I am hoping also that this will find and install a new SATA device (the 320 GB unit) properly so that Windows sees it in the correct size and can use it. Go again into Disk Management and see how it show the 320 GB unit's details. Have they changed there in any way? What about in the Upper Right pane - do the size and other info there match the Partition in the lower pane? Does that match up with what My Computer tells you about this drive?

IF that all works and the 320 is recognized properly with ALL files accessible, then the next step will be to shut down and reconnect the 1 TB unit to SATA1 and repeat the process. Set the mode of the SATA1 port in BIOS and boot up to see whether the drive is recognized properly this time. I am hoping it will. Check the details in Disk Management. However, planning for glitches, make notes of any problems and error messages and report here.

If this fails, my next thought is to start looking at Partition Recovery and Data Recovery tools, but they are more complex and the really good ones are not free. So I'm hoping that simply giving Win 7 a chance to start fresh from a status of "No SATA Present" will solve the problems.

 

[chillmike]

OK, so that last info solves one nagging issue - why did that 1 TB unit NOT show in BIOS? Well, it does. What many mobo's BIOS messages do is label the SATA ports as if they were just more IDE ports, which is a bit confusing. The are not, and they are not being treated that way, but the messages use the term anyway. A big clue to that (besides the fact it never says "SATA port...") is that real IDE ports will always show as IDE0 and IDE1 (OR Primary and Secondary IDE port), and always have BOTH Master and Slave positions (even if there is no device connected to one of those); SATA ports in such a system will start to show up as later-numbered IDE ports, and all of them will have ONLY Masters (because there cannot be a second or "Slave" on a one-device port).

I'm going to sort of "live blog" this just in case something I come across gives you another hint. Interesting note on the SATAs being labeled as IDE, that's something I had no clue about.

Now, we are still left with the puzzle of why the large drives both show up as only 128 GB sizes. Let us try a three-step examination and attempt to fix with low risk. I propose we use Disk Management to examine what Win 7 thinks is the HDD allocation of space. Then we'll make use of the fact that your one HDD that is working is on the IDE port, as is the optical drive, and deliberately uninstall all your SATA devices, then try to add them back on again and re-examine.

Sounds like a plan to me. I think I might have tried something like this before with something else and it seemed to work so fingers crossed.......

First, shut down and reconnect the 320 GB unit to SATA0, just so that we can have it available to remove later in Device Manager. Then reboot into Windows. I think you know how to get into Disk Management, but just quickly: Click on Start, then in the menu RIGHT-click on My computer and click on Manage. In the resulting window expand Storage if necessary and choose Disk Management. Now on the right you'll have two panes, and each of them scrolls so you can see all the stuff. The UPPER right pane shows you all the drives Windows is happy to use right now. The LOWER right pane shows all the hardware disk-like devices, some of which Windows may NOT be able to use yet. For each of these, there will be one horizontal rectangular block that is sub-divided into other blocks. At the left end on one major block will be a small sub-block with the device identifier like "Disk_0", its total size, and some other info. To the right of that will be one or more sub-blocks, each representing one Partition on that device. If ALL of the device's space is allocated to a single Partition, then there will be only one sub-block of this type. Now, each Partition will be used by Windows as a separate "drive" with its own letter name. So each of these blocks will have a letter name, a size, and some info about status. For example, your smaller IDE drive you're using now to boot from should have a left-hand label block that says it is Disk 0, a Basic disk with size of about 75 GB, and is online. There likely is only one large block to the right saying it is the OS unit called C: with the 75 GB size, and Healthy, etc. There will be a big block for your optical drive, too.

Ok so I've reconnected the 320gb into SATA0. Booted up the rig and it appears under "my computer" again as local disk. So no changes there. I suppose that's good. Ok disk management is open and all drives accounted for.........continuing under your the next portion of your post.......

Now look at the 1 TB unit. To the right of its label block (Check what that says - does it have the size right at about 940 GB?), what do you see? Is there just one block taking up all of the space with a size and name? What are they? Or, is there one block with a size of only about 128 GB, then another much larger block to the right labeled "Unallocated Space"? Or, are there even more blocks? What do they all say? When one or more Partitions are created on a HDD that use up LESS than the full disk space, whatever is NOT assigned to a Partition is usually at the right-hand end of this main block and called "Unallocated Space". It can be used to create a new Partition, or sometimes to expand an existing contiguous Partition.

The information shown here in Disk Management tells you what Windows understands from the data in the Partition Table on the HDD. I am hoping that this part of Disk Management can see the 1 TB unit correctly as one large Partition of about 940 GB with no Unallocated Space to the right. That would indicate that the Partition Table is good, and there is simply a problem in Windows' Registry info.

1TB drive notes the following: Disk 2 Basic 128 GB Online | 128.00 GB . Only only one block taking up the entire space. So nope unfortunately it doesn't see the full size, and not sure if it's a hint or anything but this disk shows a longer box then the 320gb drive does. Meaning the block takes up the entire pane left to right where as the 320gb stops a bit short of taking up the full pane left to right.......

So far you've looked at some details of the 1 TB HDD unit attached to SATA1. Look at the details for the 320 GB unit also, and note them down. Now simply exit from Disk Management. Now I suggest you go through Start ... Control Panel ... System ... Hardware ... Device Manager to get to the Disk Drives. Be careful and don't do anything to your 80 GB boot drive on the IDE port. But for the SATA ports, right-click on each drive and choose to Remove this device - both its driver and the hardware itself, probably as one step per drive. Exit out of here and shut down. Disconnect both SATA drives. Boot into the BIOS Setup screens and Disable the SATA ports (BIOS Integrated Peripherals, manual p. 48). Save and Exit, and you should boot into Windows to find you only have two IDE devices - a 80 GB boot HDD and an optical drive - and no other storage devices. Now shut down again.

320Gb drive states the following: Disk 1 Basic 128.00 GB Online | (E 128.00 GB RAW Healthy (Active, Primary Partition)

So it is a bit different than the 1TB drive in that in the second pane it contains more information than just size.

Bringing up Device Manager now....and now removing and both have been uninstalled. Nothing else noted so let's carry on. Computer is shut down and I'm unplugging both SATA cables from the MOBO. Inside of BIOS now and changing the OnChip SATA Controller from enabled to DISABLED. As promised only drives present are the 80gb disk with OS and optical drive. Time to shut it down.

Reconnect only one of the SATA drives - I suggest the 320 GB unit on SATA0 - and boot into BIOS Setup so you can Enable the SATA port again (manual p. 48), setting SATA Type to Native IDE. (NOTE: I am assuming here that the 320 GB unit has Win XP Pro installed originally in this mode, and not as an AHCI mode drive unit with an extra driver installed. IF it actually WAS an AHCI unit in the old machine, then set the mode here to AHCI. Setting to Native IDE mode here will PREVENT you from using the last two SATA ports (4 and 5) according to the manual.) This setting is just so that, if all works as planned, you can use the 320 GB unit as a boot device to run your original Win XP. BUT, if you plan to migrate directly to Win 7 anyway, this won't be the final configuration. Go then to Advanced BIOS Features (manual p. 44) and set the boot priority to optical then 80 GB IDE drive and NOT the 320 GB SATA drive. Anyway, Save and Exit Setup and it should boot into Windows 7 from the 80 GB unit. I am hoping also that this will find and install a new SATA device (the 320 GB unit) properly so that Windows sees it in the correct size and can use it. Go again into Disk Management and see how it show the 320 GB unit's details. Have they changed there in any way? What about in the Upper Right pane - do the size and other info there match the Partition in the lower pane? Does that match up with what My Computer tells you about this drive?

Drive plugged back in and Enabled OnChip SATA Controller and set to Native IDE. Rebooting into Windows (fingers crossed) let's see what happens...........

Well good and bad it did recognize a new drive actually by it's proper name but then a window comes up "You need to format the disk in drive D: before you can use it...........Do you want to format it? Format disk or Cancel"

Obviously I'm selecting cancel. So opening up My Computer it shows the drive as: Local Disk (D BitLocker status: Off (not sure what that is). When trying to view drive contents a message pops up "D:\ is not accessible. The volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted."

Going into Computer Management retrieves the following information: Disk 1 Basic 128.00 GB Online | (E 128.00 GB RAW Healthy (Active, Primary Partition)

So yeah pretty much same stuff unfortumately

so I'm going to try this again with the 1TB drive same steps and see if that produces anything different.

Nope EXACT same results verbatim. Which does lead me to think there has to be a way to get this fixed as I really don't think there's anything wrong with it (the TB drive that is).

IF that all works and the 320 is recognized properly with ALL files accessible, then the next step will be to shut down and reconnect the 1 TB unit to SATA1 and repeat the process. Set the mode of the SATA1 port in BIOS and boot up to see whether the drive is recognized properly this time. I am hoping it will. Check the details in Disk Management. However, planning for glitches, make notes of any problems and error messages and report here.

If this fails, my next thought is to start looking at Partition Recovery and Data Recovery tools, but they are more complex and the really good ones are not free. So I'm hoping that simply giving Win 7 a chance to start fresh from a status of "No SATA Present" will solve the problems.

So yeah that's that I suppose for this go around. No other errors or pop ups happened than those I've mentioned. I think I can get ahold of partition and data recovery tools at work (they have a bunch of programs you can check out and install on your home computers) I'll see what I can get a hold of. Any recommendations?

 

[chillmike]

So apparently something similar to this happened to my friend and he had a copy of EASEUS Data Recovery. So I ran it on the TB drive and got some strange looking stuff. It saw I think 6 different partitions all around 128gb but only added up to around 750gb or so. But it scanned the entire drive and found what i think was all the information I had on there (~650gb). So I'm in the process, well the computer/program is of transferring all of it from the 1TB internal to an external 1.5TB drive. It won't be done until tomorrow so I won't know if the data is usable or not but I've got my fingers crossed. I'll probably do a random sampling of about 30-50 pieces of data to see what sort of percent I'm getting as usable. Assuming that it works alright I'm going to use it on the 320gb drive, though I'm not sure I'll have as much success with it.

After that I suppose I'll reformat them both. Which brings me to a question. I know that reformatting doesn't necessarily "erase" all the data from the disk so my question is if I reformat the same drive a few times in a row, will that be of any benefit at all? Sort of like erasing a chalk board and then cleaning it with a sponge? (horrible analogy I know).

So fingers crossed, anyways I'm still open for ideas on how to see if I can fix the problem just so if something like this happens again I'll know what to do. So if I get all the data off I'm willing to do some more risky experimentation on the disks for craps and laughs

 

[Paperdoc]

Nuts! My idea did not work! Well, what you are trying with Easus sounds promising. If it does not, work, though, there are some other tools I've heard are good.

But if it does get ALL of your files off the two drives and onto an external you'll need to plan what to do next. My suggestion for you is that you completely delete all the Partitions from both disks to start. This is NOT wiping all the data off it. It simply wipes out any record of how the disk is organized, so it's hard to try to find anything (but not impossible).

Next I'm thinking that maybe you would like to migrate now completely to Win 7. If so, you could use the Win 7 Install disk to do a fresh install to either of those drives. Maybe better yet, since you have already installed it on this machine in a smaller drive, you do a cloning operation just as if you were replacing your old C; drive (80 GB IDE) with a new empty larger HDD to replace that old C: completely. The cloning tools you need are available free (and good tools, too!) from Seagate or WD if you have one of their drives.

BUT if those large drives are Seagate or WD models, I'd recommend you download from them and run their thorough disk diagnostic testing tools to make sure the drives are good before you rely on them. So, let us know how the data recovery goes. And tell us the make and model of yous two SATA drives. Then let us know which way you want to go forward.

 

[chillmike]

Well didn't have too much time this morning before I came to work but initial reports don't look good at all. While the complete file structure is there (from what I can tell) I only had about a 5-10% success rate at opening the file. So I'm not convinced it did that great of a job, then again I was transferring it on to a USB drive so I wonder if any data got lost because of the USB transfer. I might try a long and tedious task of transferring small portions of it on to my 80gb make sure the data is working then on to the external? Sounds tedious but some of the stuff is really going to be worth it.

Doc I really really thought that was going to be the idea that worked and then when it recognized the drive I almost jumped for joy but my jump was short lived when that error came up! haha. So that being said I like your ideas from where to go next. I'm at work so I can't get the exact drive names now, but I'm still open to hearing about other data recovery tools just in case my plan for transferring small portions slowly.

 

[Paperdoc]

One of the Best I've read about here is called GetDataBack NTFS, and they have an interesting try-before-buy process. BUT you do have to buy to use it.

As I understand, you go to their website and choose the free trial option. It downloads some stuff and runs it on your drive, then shows you exactly what your drive directory will look like if it proceeds and does the recovery job for you. You decide then whether that looks like the whole job can be done or not. If you like, you buy and it finishes the job for you on the spot, leaving you with both recovered data and a copy of their software that you just bought. If you don't like you don't pay and it leaves your HDD untouched. In your case, I assume you'd try on one drive only and, if you bought, you would then want to use it a second time on the other drive - but you've already bought it, so you would simply be running from your copy of the software.

There are other packages for this job, and there are some that are freeware. I can't comment on any of them. It also is possible that the problems you have do not need recovery of files, but instead need recovery of the Partition that is supposed to be a full drive - 320 GB or 1000 GB, respectively. Partition Recovery software is supposed to fix up these scrambled Partition Table data, but they usually do NOT do anything to help recover the files within the Partition. They basically assume that the files and the Directory structure are all OK, if you can just get at them once the Partition info is repaired.

So, look around for both Partition Recovery and File Recovery software, and see which type appears to be able to deal with your particular problem. Some may well work in a mode where you MUST copy the recovered data files etc. to a DIFFERENT drive, but that certainly could be a USB external drive.

 

[chillmike]

Thanks for the info doc! So I got to look more at the recovered files today when I got home and it was less than a 5% success rate. Hardly anything actually was recovered though the complete file directory was there strange. Anyways after reading your bit about partition recovery I opened up the EASEUS program again and noticed it had a partition recovery part of it as well. So I ran it and it picked up the partition but it still has to "recover" the files. So I'm hoping that this time around it goes a bit better. So far it looks as though it's working ok. It picked up my photo folder first (I must be the only photographer not to back up my stuff correctly yikes) and I went and looked on the external drive and it appears as though they are all coming through. Though I'm not getting my hopes up because there's still about 8 hours left. So we'll see what happens. I'll let you know what happens tomorrow.

 

[Paperdoc]

I had a couple more thoughts.

1. What does your BIOS say about the disk sizes? Does it also claim the two HDD units are about 128 GB, or does it have the correct sizes?

2. If the BIOS says they are only 128 GB each, then there is something odd about both disks hardware-wise. I would still recommend that you get the disk maker's diagnostic test suite and run it on each of those drives, but especially if the BIOS says the sizes are wrong. See what they tell you.

IF both the BIOS screens and Seagate's Seatools for DOS say the disk size is 128 GB, there is a way to handle that. BUT I do not remember whether this process destroys your ability to access existing data on the drive. Read details on the Seagate website on this question, because if that is how it operates you can't consider this step until you have recovered all your files and moved them to the external.

Anyway, this step (useful mainly if you have all your files and want to clean up the drives for re-use) uses a feature that may be unique for Seagate drives. Their Seatools for DOS utility has a place where you can set the maximum number of Logical Address Blocks it will use. This is a tool designed mainly to help people installing newer drives in an older machine that cannot support the 48-bit version of LBA and hence can only deal with drives up to 128 GB. It allows you to set a limit on what the disk will use out of its total capacity. Once set, it tells the whole world that it is a drive of the specified size. (For example, I had this situation and set a new 160 GB Seagate to behave like a 137 GB unit (by Seagate's way of counting - Windows calls this 128 GB) to conform to my mobo's capabilities). Anyway, as a complement to this tool, there also is a place in Seatools for DOS that allows you to reset it to the real full capacity of the drive. (In this case, you don't actually have to know the right number to set - you just tell it to go to the max.) So IF each of your big drives somehow got to believing that its capacity was limited to 137 GB, you could use this tool to fix that and then re-Partition your drives.

 

[SDLovell]

Old thread, but thought I'd post for anybody who found it... I'm going through the same issues and the problem for me was solved by checking my motherboard's support page and downloading and installing the SATA & SATA II driver.

But as someone else pointed out, make sure you have the 48-bit LBA update from Microsoft.