While Partitioning my hard drive my computer froze. now it says that

[dbrocki]

So a brief explanation is that i was partitioning my hard drive when it was at 87% my computer completely froze. i let it sit for hours and still nothing so i had to turn off the computer. the next day i tried to pick up from where i last left off but now when i run it off my windows xp disk it says that there is no hard drive. i went into bios and still does not recognize a hard drive. any help is appreciated thank you!

 

[moody89]

This is the reason everyone recommends you perform a full system backup before doing anything with your partition tables or indeed your HDDs in general. Of course nobody ever does until something like this happens to them, myself included but I've managed to dodge the bullet so far 😉

What program did you use to partition your HDD? If you're extremely lucky you may be able to recover your partitions and data. Failing that, you may be able to boot from a Pre-Installed Environment (PE) on a bootable CD and salvage your data that way.

If this doesn't work, you have no choice but to reformat your HDD completely.

Personally, I use the MultiBoot Recovery CD which includes a lot of handy utilities, Hiren's Boot CD and Bart's PE. In this example you would use Bart's PE to boot your system, (hopefully) access your HDD and back your data up to a removable drive before formatting.

Like I said there's a small chance you may be able to recover your partitions so if you post back with the program you used to do this I'll see what I can find on it. Good luck

 

[dbrocki]

hey moody thank you for the speedy response. lol i really wasnt looking to save much of anything just completely erase it all and be done with and start new. i used the windows xp disk to partition the hard drives. my question is how do i reformat my HDD if the computer does not even recognize that i have one?

 

[moody89]

If you download the Multi-Boot Recovery CD and burn it to a CD, you can boot from that. It has bootable partitioning tools which enable you to perform disk operations. I think Acronis Disk Director suite is the one that's on there, at least it was on the older version I have. You should be able to see it from your main menu. This should still detect your HDD and from there you will be able to re-format your HDD into your chosen format.

 

[dbrocki]

ok so i just recently got the multi boot recovery cd and it works and i am just interested on to what to do next

 

[moody89]

Burn it to CD, pop it in your drive and restart your computer. Ensure that your BIOS is set to boot from CD (it normally is as default). It should detect the CD and may prompt you to press a key to boot from it. You should then see a menu where you can choose different utilities. On the version of the BootCD I have Acronis Disk Director is on there, i tmay be slightly different on yours but have a dig around the menus if you can't find it. There will be plenty of partitioning tools on there.

Once you have one open it should detect your HDD. From there you simply re-format your HDD entirely in your chosen format. You can set different partition sizes etc. I recommend a smaller partition for your Windows and Programs directories and the rest for your data itself. You can choose the sizes depending on your HDD capacity. Let me know if you need anything else.

 

[dbrocki]

i have found the arconis thing but as i ran it it said that it couldnt detect any hDD.... yikes

 

[moody89]

That is strange...I would have thought it could detect it regardless of format or data corruption etc. I can't imagine how it would be physically damaged.

It sounds obvious but just double check everything is connected correctly to the drive and back the motherboard. Maybe disconnect and reconnect the connections to your HDD then try again.

 

[moody89]

You could also try going into the BIOS and changing the disk controller from AHCI or whatever its currently set on to IDE.

 

[dbrocki]

cant seem to find that

 

[moody89]

Are you using SATA or IDE drives? If possible try the drive in another computer just to check whether or not the HDD actually works.

 

[dbrocki]

its an older laptop and dont have any similar ones. i pulled the hd out and put it back in and so forth and so on and still nothing. it bios it says no hard drive. i can start off the boot disk but it doesnt show anything to partition.

 

[moody89]

Usually for SATA drives there is an option to choose how the BIOS handles them. It can emulate an IDE (PATA) HDD so Windows knows what to do with it without the need for drivers to be installed. Saying that, I can't even be sure you have SATA drives if you're laptop is an older one. Have you got a make and model number?

You can try loading optimised defaults from within the BIOS, this may do it but I'd have a good look around for anything that resembles an option for disk controller or something along those lines.