do you get any error messages when you try to access the G drive?

 

It is not showing a G: drive at all when I go to "My Computer." When I go to the Device Manager it is there, but it says there is no data on it. I went into BIOS and had it do a check on the HDD to see if maybe it just needed to be "reminded" that is was there, but no such luck. The computer knows it is there, but windows wont let me get to it.

Lorie

 

Try putting the HDD onto your friend's machine. It might just be windows being stupid - it's been known to happen before. Copy the data to your friend's machine as a backup, slap the drive back into your machine and format it, then test it to make sure you can create/access data on it (make a text file on it, shutdown the computer, restart and make sure you can read the file) then if all is well, restore the data back onto your drive.

Hope all goes well!

 

That is what I thought I needed to do. It is however 40gig of info and photos. I was hoping someone knew a trick on how to bump it back into recognition.

Thanks

Lorie

 

How many threads do you need to start?
http://www.techsupportforum.com/showthread.php?t=49194

What does Disk Management show.

Start > run > diskmgmt.msc

Read your other thread to see what I posted in their but keep your replies here.

 

hmmm, I guess it is obvious I felt that I needed to start two. As I am new to these forums, I was not sure if everyone checked all of them. I was covering my bases And while it is a hard drive problem, it is also an XP problem.

Soo... I will try Diskmanagement when I get home.

Lorie

 

Well, I guess this is where I post my apology about posting the same question twice. I may have skimmed the rules when I joined /blush

Anyway, excuse me for being flip about it.

Lorie

 

Diskmanagement is showing that it is dynamic and unreadable. I will try putting it into another of the comps and see what happens.

Lorie

 

I am sorry, I cannot edit my posts (or I would just put the information in the first of the 12 posts /grin), so I will just say... that I haven't been able to check if it works in another computer. I will do that tomorrow.

The diskmanagement tool says it can fix my disk. What do you suppose the chances are that this includes a full format and lube job?

/groan

Thanks for helping

Lorie

 

My gut feeling on this is that the power problems you had resulted in the disks MBR being corrupted. This would cause what you complain of. The secret is there are two copies of the MBR on any given disk. The second is the one you never see. But it's there for the system to restore the first from if it becomes corrupted. Diskmanagement I think will do this, but I'm not certain of it, as I'm not a user of such. There are other applications to do this too. The files, for now are still on your drive. Let's see if we can find the correct answer before you do anything.

 

Thank you Batty Professor. I am going to check the HD on a different comp in the morning. Have you (or anyone) done the Diskmanagement restore? I dont mind trying it, as long as I dont lose too much. I know if it doesnt work I can use a 3rdprty software

Thanks again, what a great forum

Lorie

 

It should work, but the problem I've found with the MBR backup copy is that in cases of power failure, both copies became corrupted at the same time, and doing the restore actually worsens the problem.

In cases of hard disk problems, my first instinct is always "right, time to backup". This stems from making a mistake while trying to fix one of my own drives and losing over 10 gigs worth of music. Needless to say, it took quite a long time to copy all of my CDs again.....

If you can do a backup in any way, then do so. I'm not too familiar with drive imaging software, so something like that may be able to take an exact snapshot of your drive and restore it if anything goes wrong. You probably still won't be able to access the data after the restore, but you'll certainly be in no worse a position as you are now and you will be able to attempt something else.

 

My friend had this happen with one of his clients not too long ago. We mounted the drive in several machines but Windows refused to read it. We booted up with a Knoppix live cd and it saw everything. We started up the SSH server on the live cd and copied everything down to a working machine.

 

Well, another computer didn't see the drive. We are going to try some software. If my friend hadn't already started I would try the Knoppix. I definately will if the software he is using doesn't work.

Thank you all for your time.

Lorie