xp not seeing HD partition

[cb49747]

OK,

Everything was working fine, the power went out and when the power came back on, the computer was restarted and did not restart. I booted from my xp sp2 cd and repaired my xp installation.

Everything seems to be back to normal with the exception of xp not assigning a drive letter to my second HD or dirve D. It is a 300 GB drive.

I go into computer management and see the hard drive and that it is partitioned. I believe in the repair process it re did the MBR. Any way to get the Drive back with out loosing what is on it?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Chris

 

[captaincrunch00]

I dont have a drive to test with, but if it's not assigned a drive letter, cant you right click it and say "Assign drive letter" and then it'd work?

The last time I did anything like this was in my NAS... It's been a few years.

 

[jay30uk]

Maybe the Drive is not showing because it has not been found by the BIOS.

Reboot and enter the BIOS setup then goto advance settings , press F3 to rescan HD so the Bios picks them up.(keys/settings may vary depending on you motherboard/chipset).

Hope this helps..

 

[linney]

Is this a SATA drive that requires you to Press F6 at the beginning of Setup to install the necessary drivers (via a Floppy) to see and access the drive?

 

[wolluf]

just echoing captaincrunch00 - if the drive appears in disk management and its ok, you should be able to just assign a drive letter by right clicking on it.

 

[cb49747]

I try to right click on it in disk management and it does not allow me to select that option. All I get is delete partition or properties. I do not want to delete the partition as I do not want to loose what is there.

I will try the bios thing and post back.

CHris

 

[cb49747]

The bios finds the drive just fine, so that is not the problem. I really think it has something to do with the MBR but not sure how to recreate that. Any more ideas?

Chris

 

[virginiageek]

Have you tried running chkdsk?

 

[linney]

Have you tried Fixmbr? (There could be some help in the Google links at the end of this post too.)

Repairs the master boot record of the boot disk. The fixmbr command is only available when you are using the Recovery Console.

http://search.microsoft.com/search/results.aspx?st=b&qu=Invalid+partition+table&view=en-us

266745 - Error Message When You Run fixmbr Command

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;266745&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

153973 - Recovering NTFS Boot Sector on NTFS Partitions

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;153973&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

http://groups.google.com/groups?sou...=UTF-8&q="Invalid+partition+table"+windows+xp

http://www.google.com/search?source...=UTF-8&q="Invalid+partition+table"+windows+xp

Go to

http://www.bootitng.com.

look for MBRWORK in the free tolls and download
it, put it on a DOS floppy (one made by formatting in XP and taking the MSDOS Startup disk option will do).

Boot that and run MBRWORK
Use options
1 (to back up the current state, so it could be restored with 2)
3 then 4 to delete the current code and tables
there will then be a possibility of using
A
which will scan the disk for 'signatures' of partitions and rebuilt the partition table then
5
to install standard MBR code so the disk could be booted


--
Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)

http://www.bootitng.com/utilities.html

 

[captaincrunch00]

What kind of disk does it say it is?

If you right click on "Disk 1" or whatever number it is (on the left of the partitions) do you have an option to make the disk active or something?

 

[wolluf]

If disk management is not showing it as formatted, then either the disk is damaged or the filestore is (most likely the partition table). First thisng I'd try is running the drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility (most have one on their website). This will tell you if the drive has a problem (and can usually offer repairs to some of these). If this says its failing/failed and can't repair it, then drive is effectively dead - though you might be able to retrieve data via a data recovery app (like getdataback). If its still in warranty, obviously you can get it replaced.

If the diagnostic says its fixed problems, just reboot and see if its now visible. If it says its ok, try recovery console and see if chkdsk can access it (run chkdsk x: /r where x: is problem drive letter).

btw - do you have any recovery type software (specifically Norton Goback) installed? How was disk partitioned and formatted originally?

 

[cb49747]

OK,

Thanks for all the help. I believe the problem was the partition table. I ended up using testdisk 6.3, it found the partition. I then changed it from a ntfs to a fat32 and than back to a ntfs and wala the drive was back.

Thanks for all your help guys.

Chris