I reformatted my old Maxtor Hard drive (53073U6 - 30gb) with XP following some issues. All of the important data I needed was backed up to a Seagate Barracuda 7200 (120gb).

Previously both hard drives were accessible - the Maxtor jumpers set to Master, the Seagate with no jumpers set to Slave. The cable runs from the Master, via the Slave to the board. Never a problem and although perhaps a bit slow by today's standards, worked well enough for my use.

XP has reinstalled onto the Mastr Drive (Maxtor) with no problems but although I can see the Seagate back up (slave) drive in Device Manager, I cannot get the Drive to open or access any of my critical folders.

At panic stage as I have work files, hundreds of photos and music and do not wish to lose any of them.

What do I need to do to get the slave drive back online without in any way deleting files. (The Slave/Seagate is partioned itself into 3 drives and I wish to access all of them). I understand reformatting may delete a partition but do not wish to try this. I don't understand if initializing the drive as suggested elsewhere may have a similar effect. I have not changed any ofthe BIOS settings but the set up now is exactly as before.

As an alternative, could I just connect the Slave Drive but boot using the Windows XP disk, then access the files and copy onto some form of external storage - in that way it won't matter if I trash the Seagate and start over.

Thanks and thanks again

Hello, james. Your hardware setup is fine. Your problem is that Explorer is not looking at the drive root when it starts, so as to catalogue the root directories.
Can applications access the drive and related files? Possibly not if you have not used them since the reinstallation...
If you open an Explorer window [dclick My Computer] and type the drive letter.. eg. D:\ into the Address Bar does it open in that directory? And can you then move throught the folders therein?
If that does not work can you open the drive via Internet Explorer [type D:\ into the address bar.... etc]?

Addressing your other queries.. do not format any partition on that data drive... it will make file recovery a little more tedious.
Does the drive show in Disk Management [via Admin Tools, Comp Mgmnt] ? There should be no need to initialise the drive. Does Disk Management show that as an option?

Hi and thanks for looking at my issue.

I have booted the PC and can still see in Device Manager that the second disk (registered as a Seagate Disk etc) is visible, and working normally it says).

I have attempted to trace the partitions by typing in D:/; E:/ etc. without success.

When I enter Disk Management in Administrative Tools; Computor Management; I see the following "volume's":

Volume Layout Type File System Status
(C Partition Basic NTFS Healthy (System)
(D Partition Basic CDFS Healthy
Photo Album Partition Basic NTFS Healthy (Active)

Directly below I can see the following:

Disk 0 (C 28.6GB NTFS Healthy (System)
Disk 1 Photo Album 111.79GB NTFS Healthy (Active)
It then references the CD-ROM again as above.

When I click on the C Drive and review properties, it brings up a pie chart of the disk etc.

However, when I right click on the "photo album" disk, it wither gives me an option to delete partition, or help.

I haven't explored the BIOS but as this is exactly the same confiduration as before, I am at a lost why the foles should remain unavailable.

Furthermore (if this helps) the Seagate Disk had 2 other partitions on it when I backed up data and coped information to it. Both had information in them and are crucial files.

At this stage I am only interested in getting the information out and backed up onto a removable drive - can you help at all?

Thanks again for your support

James

Hello, James... u can post screenshots, you know [printscreen, then Accessories, Paint, paste into it], but I get the picture from your description.
You are seeing the optical drive in Disk Mgmnt cos you have a cd in the drive, hence the CDFS partition -that is of no concern. What is interesting is that the cd drive is shown above the problem hard drive in the first list - in my experience, no matter the drive letter assigned, it should appear at the bottom ie. after the hard drives.
I notice the Photo Album drive has no drive letter assigned. But it is shown as Active?!!
Active means that the PA drive is being used to provide the booting files for Windows; here is a bit of backgrounding for you:

When you first set up the partition(s) on a disk a boot sector will be written for each volume; one, which will be on a primary partition, and one only, must be marked as Active, unless this is a slave or data disk in which case none are marked Active. There will be only one boot sector per volume [volume = drive, if you wish.. eg c:, or d:]. The disk's master boot record will be written at the same time. Only one of these per disk.
XP can be placed in any partition, including logical, by itself.
When it commences loading the OS, BIOS searches for the Master Boot Record on the master disk. The MBR's partition table for that disk is read; the single, active partition is noted; the MBR code is loaded into memory, and BIOS hands control to that. The MBR code directs operations to the partition marked as active, specifically to its boot sector. All partitions contain the same boot sector code, but only that active partition's boot sector code is loaded; it assumes control and searches for certain files in the root of that partition. If your OS is XP then ntldr will be read into RAM and ntdetect.com will examine your hardware [and either BIOS or Windows will assign resources to them depending on whether you have ACPI].
ntldr will read boot.ini and depending upon your configuation you may be presented with a choice of operating systems to load. And on it goes...

Okay, that is just a paste from something I wrote for someone else, but it may clarify these next points for you.
-because C: is reported as your System drive [M$ speak for the drive with your boot files] check in the root of your C: drive for these [the boot] files: boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com. You will have to set Folder Options, View, to not Hide Protected Op Sys files. If these files exist in C:\ you may use Disk Mgmnt to set C: as the Active partition. Then make sure that in BIOS Setup the disk with C: is set as first in the boot order, that your sys restarts... and then use DM to remove the Active setting from the PA drive.
-it may be that if you create another user account with Admin privileges your problem will disappear.
-If that does not work then let's force Windows to re-read all the partition information from each disk and rewrite a new set into the registry.... [this will not damage your hard disk info]
--go Start, run, and enter regedit.
--navigate to this key [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2]
----in the left column expand MountPoints2, then highlight and delete the subkey CPC [and only subkey CPC...]
--restart your computer. MountPoint2\CPC should then be re-created.
[the CPC subkey contains info about each installed drive.. ie. each hard drive partition and each installed mountable drive... floppy, optical... the information is drive number, name, disk signature if it exists and partition info].
Anyway.. what happened? Did any suggestion work?

Hi Gerbil

Firstly, many thanks for your patience - I work away and getting to complete some of the tasks advised takes a few days.

I have tried all the above but in summary, have not been able to resolve. I would make some comments as below, using screenshots (thanks for the tip) to assist.

1. I removed the CD and now the CD Drive drops to the bottom of the list.
2. I checked in my C Drive and found the boot files you refer to: boot.ini; nldr and ntdetect.com. The BIOS is set to read the Master (Maxtor) drive first.
3. However, there is still no Drive Letter attached to the "Photo Album" Drive (slave) and it advises that the disk status is Healthy (Unknown Partition). See Screenshot Disk Management 1.
The reason it has changed to Unknown Partition is because a friend helping me, entered C:\DISKPART and through some steps (listing Drive and then Partition) made this partition INACTIVE. We rebooted but nothing changed and I asked him to stop - trusting your advice.

4. I have tried to use DM to make the C: Drive Active, but when I click on it the "Mark Partition as Active" is greyed out and nothing happens. (By the way, if I right click on the PA Drive the only option remains Delete or Help).

5. I have again checked the Device Manager and the Slave Drive (Seagate) still appears - See screenshot Device Manager 1. When I click on properties/volume the following appears against Partition Style: Master Boot Record (MBR) - See screenshot Device Manager 2
I have racked my brains over this and can advise that many moons ago, I decided to move the OS onto the Maxtor (now master drive), making the Seagate a Slave and using this disk with its' larger capacity to be my back up. Does this explain its' status as MBR? Will this prevent me accessing any data in the future? I did not consciously reformat the Seagate (now slave) and am guessing these are residual files?

6. I entered regedit and followed all steps - I'm afraid I didn't capture a screenshot but eventually under CPC it showed:
Volume:
21d48e29-a690-11
68190142-a694-11
68190142-a694-11.

On rebott there was no change to seeing the second drive but the CPC and volumes had been recreated as you suggested.

Still desperately in hope that I can recover my lifes work and really appreciate your support

Thanks

James

Hello, James.
-Your C: drive is the System drive, it IS being used to boot the system, it is Active [hence that option is greyed out]... I just wished to check before getting you to remove the Active status of the PA drive [seagate]. No active drive woulda made things unnecessarily complicated.
-Re the MBR partition style shown in Volumes tab... that is fine - it is the method Windows hard drives use to record the partition information of the drive, ie. the MBR records the start and length of all partitions on the drive. There is no problem there with files from its previous life.
We can look at the partition information; it may be corrupted. Take care with this tool you will download, don't misuse it. Delete means delete, and so on. But it is easy to use.
Get MBRWhiskey from: http://red.boot-land.net/index.html
Extract the files, MBRWhiskey.exe is the one we are interested in [MBRWiz.exe is command-line only].
Orright, start it [dclick the exe].
=Select Disk:0; go Disk, Save MBR to file, name it MBR_SaveDisk0.dat
=Select Disk:1:, and save its MBR also.
That was for safety, and you can keep those files until you change the disks' partitioning.
=go Extra, Write Disk Structure & Part info to file..., Save it to MyDisksPartInf.ini
Do not be tempted to Repair the MBR - it will only do it for the Active disk, anyway, and that one is okay.
-exit from MBRWhiskey.
-open a notepad, drag MyDisksPartInf.ini into it, and post that.

I could add that the window does not fill until you select a disk; when you select Disk1 [the seagate] a screenshot of the populated window would be nice.

Hi again

Sorry to appear dull!

I have followed your link as described for MBRWhiskey but cannot find a download per se.

I have downloaded the link at the bottom of the page there (BartPE plug in inlcuded) - is that the right file? It is called MbrWiz, a .7z document!

Given the sensitive description of how to use I don't wish to be clumsy and use it incorrectly.

Btw, I did follow a link to get a file from a linked site called MBR Wiz 2.0 - it's a zip file.

Secondly, can you please describe the additional screenshot you are after - I can't follow - sorry.

Finally, I'm not sure I understand the Active comment - I think it is the Maxtor (Master) that is saying Healthy (System) - as per Disk Management 1 screenshot. The "greyed out" section occurs when I try to click on the Seagate Slave disk, leaving just delete or help visible.

If you can just confirm I'll have a go - once again thanks for your endurance with this request!

Regards

James

Hi, James... re that linked page : I often try to give the author's home page to simply give him credit. Bart PE plugin is so that you can integrate the pgm with Bart's PE disc - we are not interested in that. Yep, that is the correct file, it's a .7z, and WINRAR or 7-Zip [both free] will both cope with that. It contains both the GUI and the commandline pgms.
"4. I have tried to use DM to make the C: Drive Active, but when I click on it the "Mark Partition as Active" is greyed out" - it already is Active, so that is fine.
The screenshot: dclick MBRWhiskey.exe to start it; in the HDD box click the down slider, select Drive:1 and the window will populate. Shoot it.
Then go Extra, Write Disk Structure & Part info to file..., Save it to MyDisksPartInf.ini.. drag to a notepad and post it. I have a feeling that this will show that the partition is hidden, or somehow corrupted.
What you could do yourself is read the partition window for Disk:1, and see if any partitions show as hidden. If one does, then simply:
-select that partition in the window,
-go Partition, Unhide.