Member Avatar for gogos

Dear all,

I have a problem with my hard drive. In my old system I had 2 hard drives. The first one was 120G (with 2 partitions - 30G and 90G) and the system installed in the 30G. The second is a Maxtor 200G.
After formatting the system partition (30G) and re installing windows xp in thew same one I can't see my 200G drive. In fact I can see it in the boot screen while pressing pause, but in fdisk there is no partition letter or under my computer I can't see anything. In device manager it says it is working properly. The second partiton (90G) is fine. Also the cables seem fine. I also used the same type of connection.
Primary master the 120G, primary slave the 200G, secondary master dvd writer, secondary slave dvd rom.

I have to mention that I really need to keep the 200G without formatting as I have important files in it.

Thanx for any help.

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was right to point at Disk Management, and ’s note that the drive appears in POST but shows as "unreadable" in Windows narrows it to two broad classes: metadata (partition table / filesystem) corruption, or a host/driver/BIOS limitation for large IDE drives. Do not initialize or format the disk in Disk Management — that action will overwrite the very data you need to recover.

First preserve the disk by making a sector-level image onto another physical drive before any repair attempt. Free, reliable tools: TestDisk can scan and often restore partition tables or copy files, and GNU ddrescue can create an image from a failing disk while skipping bad sectors. Work from the image whenever possible so recovery attempts are non-destructive.

If you proceed with TestDisk: run it (or run it against the image), let it Analyze, perform Quick Search and then Deeper Search if needed, and use the file-listing feature to copy important files to a safe drive. Only after you have confirmed file copies from the image should you consider running chkdsk or allowing Windows to initialize the disk — those operations modify on-disk metadata and can make recovery harder.

If TestDisk cannot find usable partitions or the image shows many bad sectors, consider commercial recovery tools or a professional recovery service. Also check BIOS/chipset support and jumpers: older IDE BIOSes can hit the 137GB (28-bit LBA) limit — updating the motherboard BIOS and VIA IDE drivers or temporarily connecting the Maxtor as the only drive on the primary cable (jumper set to single/master) are safe troubleshooting steps. Background on LBA limits is available at Logical block addressing.

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Member Avatar for Coconut Monkey

How is the 200Gb drive connected? If it's SATA, then you will have install the required SATA controller drivers in order for Windows XP to see it (unless you have a native SATA motherboard, such as one using an Intel chipset).

Otherwise, you might have to give Windows a gentle push! Make sure you're logged in with your administrator account, and head into Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management. On the right you should see a list of drives, with your 200Gb drive somewhere within. "Activation" may be required by right clicking its entry and choosing the right option (I'm not sure which).

Member Avatar for gogos

My system is
AMD athlon xp 2600
512
qdi kudoz7x/600-6a
they are connected with IDE and are ATA.

Now in device manager it says that
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
Primary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel
VIA bus master IDE Controller

all three are well and running

In disk management It says that drive is unreadable.

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