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No.1 · 11-11-2004, 01:00 PM

[EDIT] So now i have another HD problem. I have 2 HDs with XP on them, but can only boot from one of them, as one is a C drive and the one which won't boot is the H drive. I cannot change the H to a C because disk management will not assign the same letter twice and i cannot change C to anything as it is the system drive

All that i need to do is change H to C as XP will only boot from a C. Any help would be appreciated Thanks again

I have a massive problem with my HD. It is full of all my videos/documents/music etc.. that is not backed up yet

ops:

Its a 200gig drive, and is half full, so it's about 90GBs of data at risk here.

I booted up my comp as usual this evening, and tried to acces the drive through My Computer, all i got was "H:/ Is not formatted. Format now?" with options yes or no.

How do i retrieve this data? Do i have to format (and will it still be there) or do i have to get a special too to do it?

I can't believe this :cry: ... i am so fucked if i lose all of this stuff, so please, please, pleas help me

AlienDB7 · 11-11-2004, 03:41 PM

Goto Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management, there you should see the status for each disk.

If you format it, the information is gone technically. There're ways to unformat the HD and recover most files but it can be risky. My guess is, the OS is having problem reading the partition table or the file system is damaged in some way.

No.1 · 11-11-2004, 05:03 PM

Originally Posted by AlienDB7

Goto Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management, there you should see the status for each disk.

If you format it, the information is gone technically. There're ways to unformat the HD and recover most files but it can be risky. My guess is, the OS is having problem reading the partition table or the file system is damaged in some way.

Okay.. here's what it is at the moment.

I have also seen this tutorial

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.c...id=1139&page=8 ... is this a good way to do it?

m3mys3lf4ndi · 11-11-2004, 05:12 PM

i've never tryed it - but sounds good - shall work coz U R still able to see that partition under windows

No.1 · 11-11-2004, 05:23 PM

Originally Posted by m3mys3lf4ndi

i've never tryed it - but sounds good

Thanks man, but i can't really afford to take many risks

"sounds good" won't cut it when i lose all my data

Anybody have any more pearls of wisdom?

AlienDB7 · 11-11-2004, 05:53 PM

No matter how good a tool is, there's no guarentee it won't damage your data. The only "safe" method is to use image your HD and transfer the imaged data to an identical HD... then work from there. Since it's a 200G drive, don't think that'll be a viable option.

If you have a bootable linux cd (like Knoppix), you can probably try to access the partition from it. Since it mounts (opens) the partition read-only by default, there shouldn't cause any problem even when things don't work the way it should.

Enough with the software solution.... did you try to shut down your PC and let it "rest" for a while? Often times the HD will work again when things start to cool down again.

No.1 · 11-11-2004, 05:59 PM

Well, i'm going to let the PC rest for about 20hrs, overnight and all day, the we'll see how things go.

Thanks for the Tips Alien 8)

deth · 11-11-2004, 06:46 PM

had the same thing happen..i have software...will pm u the link. u're going to need a HD to copy it onto tho.

No.1 · 11-11-2004, 07:14 PM

^^^

Thank you deth... look forward to your PM

abbor · 11-11-2004, 07:21 PM

I accidently formatted a disk once, but when I used Actice@ File Recovery, I got it all back... PM me to get the prog if the other shit don't work..

No.1 · 11-13-2004, 05:08 PM

New booting query added to first post

deth · 11-13-2004, 05:10 PM

Originally Posted by thenumber1

[EDIT] So now i have another HD problem. I have 2 HDs with XP on them, but can only boot from one of them, as one is a C drive and the one which won't boot is the H drive. I cannot change the H to a C because disk management will not assign the same letter twice and i cannot change C to anything as it is the system drive

All that i need to do is change H to C as XP will only boot from a C. Any help would be appreciated Thanks again

are you sure? ahve you tried changing the boot order when in bios when you boot up?..i know a friend who is booting up xp off of a G: drive

No.1 · 11-13-2004, 05:14 PM

I do not know how to enter bios.. the PC is Sony Vaio branded, so it's pretty difficult to do most regular things

deth · 11-13-2004, 05:19 PM

when u first start up the computer it should say something like 'press F10 to enter setup'..give that a go..look for something like boot ordera nd make sure H: is before C:

No.1 · 11-13-2004, 05:23 PM

Okay got into BIOS F3 then F2

It allowed me to choose either the 200GB or 80GB as boot drive, so i chose the 200GB (currently H), but when it came to restarting, the message PRESS ANY KEY TO REBOOT came up

It's a clean install on that drive, so there shouldn't be any problems, or do you think that maybe Sony will only allow the shipped hardware to work with product recovery CDs?