Missing Partition for Drive D: !!! 1

[Guest_imported]

First of all, i've two hard drives. One for my system, the other for my media (Mp3s and the like)

So last week i decided to reinstall Windows me from windows 2000... and when I attempted to access my d: drive, it spewed the error message. "Drive D has not been formatted, would you like to format it now?"

How is this possible? I hadn't formatted the disk with NTFS or made it a dynamic disk in Win2k or anything!! My bios still detects it, and so does windows.... it just says that it hasn't been formatted.

(my linux box says that it's been formatted with a DOS 12-bit FAT file system...this just confuses me even more)

I have valuable data on this disk, and I would appreciate some help as to how I might go about recovering it!

thanks,
-molekular

 

[Comtech]

Throw the ME Cd out the window.
If at any time, your D drive was partitioned with fdisk, and the partition made active primary DOS, windows ME won't see it. ME only allows ONE primary active partition PER SYSTEM! All other partitions must be extended DOS partitions/logical partitions.
Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/

 

[Guest_imported]

I took your advice. But to no avail!!!
I got the Win2k CD back and reinstalled windows 2000
(winME is a sad OS anyhow. hehe).
But still, i get the same error.

Are there any partitioning programs that i might invest in? or shareware, that would allow me to regain access without windows knowing??!?

I'm becoming really anxious at the thought of not getting my data back. blah.

thanks again,
.:molekular:.

 

[Comtech]

ME has successfully screwed your disk, however, you MAY recover it.
Pull your current working disk out (disconnect it).
Boot to a startup disk (win98 one is perfect, or get one at

http://www.startdisk.com)

Use fdisk /mbr on it, then SYS it.
You'll AT LEAST get to a DOS prompt then (and Win2k may actually see it).
If not, get Xxcopy from

http://www.xxcopy.com

to recover all your data. Xxcopy RETAINS your longfilenames, whereas, the windows xcopy does not( in DOS). Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/