Second drive problems

swanseamale47

swanseamale47

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wayne clarke
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I have 2 hard drives in the pc, yesterday we had a short power outage, now the second drive keeps asking to be formatted, now I more or less have everything backed up but I would like to explore the disk just to check.
I have an external housing so took it out and put it in that. Then the second problem, the pc won't boot up without both disks in it, I can remove the second disk after boot up but the pc won't see any external drives without both disks internal.
What the hecks going on??

Anybody???
Thanks.
Wayne
 
some older pc use IDE conections , this involved setting a jumper .

on some drive there were 4 options Master , Slave , Single Drive and master with slave.

it sounds like the second drive contains your OS(windows).

Cheers Steve
 
The OS is on C drive, it's E drive thats playing up, would the jumper on C drive need to change if theres no E drive present?
 
No

You need to go into the bios and set the secondary IDE device to None.

The PC is still probably looking for a second drive on bootup.

If the drive is jumpered cable select are you sure your actually removing the correct drive. It may sound daft but I've done it in the past.
 
swanseamale47 said:
The OS is on C drive, it's E drive thats playing up, would the jumper on C drive need to change if theres no E drive present?
Click to expand...
If C: and E: are attached by a single cable and E: is set to the master drive then yes. Master here refers to bus master and NOT the master drive for the system.
 
Ok I have swopped over E dive (the problem one) for a spare, and have now tried E in an external housing, it spins up but the pc just doesn't see it, I have tried the jumper in a few different options but nothing doing (the drive that was in the housing is the same make exactly and it sees that one fine with the same jumper settings). I'm guessing the drive has had it?
Luckly I have pretty much everything backed up, it's just a PITA to sort it all out agin.
Thanks for the replies, if anybody has any ideas I'll give them a go.
 
Wrap the drive in clingfilm and stick it in the fridge for an hour.

Then quick as ya like connect it up and see what happens.

I've been able to recover data many times that way. :D
 
ChrisH said:
Wrap the drive in clingfilm and stick it in the fridge for an hour.

Then quick as ya like connect it up and see what happens.

I've been able to recover data many times that way. :D
Click to expand...

Fridge rather than freezer? Ok I'll give it a go.
Thanks.
 
if the block allocation map is gone or crupted , this can cause the problem.
it is psible to get data back from a drive that this has happened to .

but can be a long process , the fact it still spins up is an encouraging sign.

i have accully recovered one of mine that this happened to.

cheers Steve
 
You might get it to boot up OK ,without the E-drive, if you clear the CMOS (should be a jumper near the battery and you just change the pins for a few secs).
 
neil_g said:
have a look in disk management and see if it just needs a drive letter assigning
Click to expand...

Disk management took ages to open with the drive plugged in but it does see it, and the drive shows up in my computer now but it won't open and if I right click it just hangs up, DM also shows it as blank with no ntfs or fats after it.
 
Does it boot up now without the E drive?
 
I put a new drive in (shows up as F drive) and pc works fine, but I'm still having no luch accessing the old E dirve, if I use disk manager it forces the dive to show up and start autoloading but it doesn't go any further and tends to freeze up everything.
Is it worth trying to format it from disk manager? it's not showing the ntfs tag the other drives show.
Thanks for all the replies everybody.
Wayne
 
swanseamale47 said:
I put a new drive in (shows up as F drive) and pc works fine, but I'm still having no luch accessing the old E dirve, if I use disk manager it forces the dive to show up and start autoloading but it doesn't go any further and tends to freeze up everything.
Is it worth trying to format it from disk manager? it's not showing the ntfs tag the other drives show.
Thanks for all the replies everybody.
Wayne
Click to expand...

Well it must be worth a try but it sounds knackerred to me.

The question really is would you trust it again if it did format?
 
if you still want to have a go at the data on the drive, a last ditch attempt would be to boot a linux live disc and try accessing the drive that way, ubuntu is the one i use for such activities. the live cd boots a temporary linux operating system that is more likely to access your damaged drive, then from there you can simpy copy and paste the files over (providing it isn't too damaged)

i've recovered data lots of times using ubuntu from drives that windows simply refuses to address :)
 
This is IDENTICAL to my recent emergency problem, absolutely identical. Drive letters assigned, warned I need to format, no way to access data.

Let me save you a week :D Disk Recoup, only thing that worked for me. I tried 5 programs, some freeware and some paid for. They all crashed when accsessing the dodgy HDD.

Disk Recoup DETECTS the crash and stalls the program for a minute before working around it. Very clever.

Have you been getting warnings to "Scan and Fix" at all recently? I got loads before mines broke. It did however break RIGHT after a fall to the floor :)

I still think I need another week or so to recover whatever sanity I had before it happened.

G.
 
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