Win2k thinks my harddrive is unformatted...

[Guest]

I posted this in the harddrive-forum as well, but I'm desperate for help, so please try to help me...

I'll give you the whole story.

I have a K6-2 350MHz system with two IBM harddrives, one 8GB (primary slave, D and one 30GB (primary master, C.

I decided it was time to upgrade the system and bought a T-bird 1.33GHz, Abit KG7-LITE, 256MB DDR DIMM and a Chieftec Dragon MidiTower.

Since this upgrade probably would require a reinstallation of Windows 2000 I decided to format the whole drive to get a really clean installation.

Therefore I copied everything on my 30GB-drive that I really needed (mp3, divX, games, appz, documents, drivers, etc.) to the small 8GB drive just for temporary storage while I sweeped the "main-drive" clean. I managed to fill the entire disk - 8GB of data that has taken years to gather.

I had FAT32 on both disks and both Windows 98 and Windows 2000 installed on the C drive.

After installing all the new hardware I booted up (and adjusted the necessary BIOS settings) and chose Windows 98 in the boot menu, I hit F8 and started only DOS. I switched to D: and typed "format C:" and the whole process went quite painless. At this time both drives were functioning perfectly, the backed-up files were all on the D-drive and all was normal.

After formatting the C drive I rebooted the system with the Win2000 CD in the CD player, and the Win2000 installation started.

Already at this point did I notice something strange - in the beginning of the installation, when you are asked on what drive you want to install the OS, both harddrives were listed, BUT the "backup-drive" was listed as errornous. I don't remember _exactly_ what it said 'cuz I didn't think it would be a huge problem, so I went on with the installation and all went just fine.

When I was done I opened Windows Explorer to re-locate all the files from the 8GB backup drive, and to install all software I had there, etc. It was no good... *sigh*

The D-drive was listed as "Local Disk (D" and when I tried to open it a message told me that the harddrive was not formatted, and asked me if I wanted to format it. Naturally I chose NO, 'cuz I KNOW it is formatted. Geez, it's FULL of stuff that I can't possible afford to lose...

What am I to do?!?! What went wrong, and more importantly, how can I save my data???

Quote from the Boss: I didn't say it was your fault. I said I was going to blame it on you.

 

[Bames_Jond]

Check the cables! If you installed your motherboard yourself did you make sure not to touch the PCB on the harddrives??? IBM harddiscs are very sensitive about that. I have just recently had a 30 GB IBM hd brake down due to me touching the PCB by accident when installing a new CPU fan. I had spend weeks recording music to my harddrive from minidiscs and I lost all the data! :-(
Try to boot from a windows 98 cd and run Fdisc. Check to see what kind of FAT the drive is using! Check if the drive is spinning up and making the usual noice! If it doesn't it might be fried like mine was!

Let me know how it works out for you!

<== StarCraft is not just another computer game! ==>

 

[Guest]

The thing is that after I had installed everything I booted up the computer and accessed the D drive successfully. It was from the D drive that I formatted the main drive (C. So it WAS working right after the hardware installation. I also checked the files that I had stored on the disk and they were still there at that point.

It seems it the problem started right after I rebooted the system after formatting the C drive...

Quote from the Boss: I didn't say it was your fault. I said I was going to blame it on you.

 

[NickM]

The thing is you don’t have a choice, do what Bames Jond suggested:

Try to boot from a windows 98 cd and run Fdisc. Check to see what kind of FAT the drive is using!