Had a problem where one of the parttitions of my first hard drive became corrupt. (I have two 60 gig drives..first has Win ME, and then three other partitions for software/games/photography/..second drive has MP3's, and is 1/2 full) I reinstalled the operating system, on the first drive (clean install), after getting the lost programs installed, found the 2nd drive, housing all the mp3's, is only being recognized as unallocated space. How can I get this which was my "G" drive, "Music" back without losing the data? Will it be recognized by just creating an extended partition around it? I have Partition Magic 6.0, but don't want to do anything until I know what to do. Thank you for your help...
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2nd Drive full of data recognized as unallocated space
- Thread starter vtron
- Start date
Accessdabbler
Technical User
Are you sure you weren't hit by a boot sector virus?
I don't use WinME but it's supposed to be similar to Win98 so you should be able to boot to a command prompt.
Try running FDISK /MBR on the second drive to attempt to fix the Master Boot Record.
I don't use WinME but it's supposed to be similar to Win98 so you should be able to boot to a command prompt.
Try running FDISK /MBR on the second drive to attempt to fix the Master Boot Record.
With all due respect to AccessDabbler, I don't believe there's any benefit in performing an FDisk/MBR on your drive G, because I imagine it's only a Data Drive with no OS. The Master Boot Record (MBR) is the information in the first sector of any hard disk or diskette that identifies how and where an operating system is located so that it can be boot (load) into the computer's main storage or random access memory.
The answer to your question is that you shouldn't delete everything on your hard drive by partitioning a portion of the drive with PM. However, don't parition/format the wrong partition. With 30 gig of MP3s and 30 gig unallocated space,(or is the system telling you the whole 60 gig is unallocated -I wasn't sure from your post) you might be hard pressed to find the right partition. If it is the whole 60 gig, then like you, I would be cautious too, and unfortunately I don't have much experience using Partition Magic to advise you properly. If it is the complete drive, then you might lose the data through partitioning.
Is there any way that you can back-up your MP3s. I realise that 30 gig is alot of music, but maybe you can be resourceful enough to find a way (Copy them to free space on your other partitions, etc.). I'm assuming that you can actually "see" the MP3s on G, either through windows or DOS. Once backed-up, FDISK and reformat G and copy the MP3s back.
Let us know how it turns out.
Cyberboy
Every computer is like a snowflake. There are no two alike.
The answer to your question is that you shouldn't delete everything on your hard drive by partitioning a portion of the drive with PM. However, don't parition/format the wrong partition. With 30 gig of MP3s and 30 gig unallocated space,(or is the system telling you the whole 60 gig is unallocated -I wasn't sure from your post) you might be hard pressed to find the right partition. If it is the whole 60 gig, then like you, I would be cautious too, and unfortunately I don't have much experience using Partition Magic to advise you properly. If it is the complete drive, then you might lose the data through partitioning.
Is there any way that you can back-up your MP3s. I realise that 30 gig is alot of music, but maybe you can be resourceful enough to find a way (Copy them to free space on your other partitions, etc.). I'm assuming that you can actually "see" the MP3s on G, either through windows or DOS. Once backed-up, FDISK and reformat G and copy the MP3s back.
Let us know how it turns out.
Cyberboy
Every computer is like a snowflake. There are no two alike.
- Thread starter
- #4
Thank you for your replies. I cannot get into the 60 Gig hard drive, the entire drive was Partitioned in April, FAT32, and MP3's placed on the drive. The drive was about 1/2 full. On "My Computer", it shows as a "local drive" "G", when I originally labeled it "Music Drive G". When I was having problems, before I reinstalled the operating system on the first drive, I unplugged this drive, because I didn't want anything else to happen. It would truly surprise me if these MP3's were still not there, I just don't know how to access them, since it shows as "Unallocated" Size "57,239.4" Used "0" Unused "0" Status "None" and Primary/Logical "Primary". Hope this makes it more clear.
Try the following:
1. On your C drive, go to Accessories
2. Click on the MSDOS prompt.
An MSDOS window will appear on your screen.
3. Type G:
If you see a directory, such as G:\ABC\folder>, type cd (This will take you to the root of G), so G:\> will appear.
4. type dir /w
You should see the drive volume and Serial # info, followed by the contents of drive G.
If all the MP3s are there you should see them all listed. From here they can be copied through DOS to your other partitions for safe-keeping while you repartition drive G. If you need help with the copying through DOS,let us know when you get to this point. In the DOS prompt, just type exit to get back to Windows.
Cyberboy
Every computer is like a snowflake. There are no two alike.
1. On your C drive, go to Accessories
2. Click on the MSDOS prompt.
An MSDOS window will appear on your screen.
3. Type G:
If you see a directory, such as G:\ABC\folder>, type cd (This will take you to the root of G), so G:\> will appear.
4. type dir /w
You should see the drive volume and Serial # info, followed by the contents of drive G.
If all the MP3s are there you should see them all listed. From here they can be copied through DOS to your other partitions for safe-keeping while you repartition drive G. If you need help with the copying through DOS,let us know when you get to this point. In the DOS prompt, just type exit to get back to Windows.
Cyberboy
Every computer is like a snowflake. There are no two alike.
twertman68
Technical User
who makes these hard drives.try going to there web site and see if they have any utilities to check your drive.did you use the discs that came with these drives to set them up.i had a wd hard drive one time and used fdisk to partition the drive and installed the os.i then put a new os in and this time i used the disc to set up the partitions.i got tired of the slower boot up because of the hard drive software so i removed it.loaded fdisk and went to repartition the drive and format to find out the old fdisk partition was there with all the old data.so i exit fdish without doing anything and restarted the computer just to see what would happen.the old os loaded up with all my old setting just like it was before i used the disc.i then reinstalled the hd software and it then show the drive as unpartition again.i'm not sure how other software works but it may be possible if you used something before to set up this partition and then reinstalled your os this info may not be on the first hard drive now to read the partition on the second hard drive.
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