"philo" wrote in message
...

snip

If you are still around Doug, this could be settled by just looking at the
message
on the screen as the machine boots up.
It will say something like EZ Bios.. then specify which key to hit to boot
from floppy
(I forgot the exact wording.) If the machine has that message now...
or if it had such a message before and no longer has it...then indeed it
looks like an overlay problem.

IT WON'T BE THERE. The problem is that the overlay is NOT being invoked at
boot time, so the partition is not recognised as valid.

Again, there is no definite evidence of such an overlay...

There is ample evidence - the partition was accessible, now it's not,
although the space is still allocated to it.

and there are other reasons why the second drive is unreadable.
It could be something as simple as a loose IDE cable.

The second drive is readble. FDISK reported the partitioning.

The OP might have run fdisk and deleted the drive, then recreated it in
error and not formatted it. etc

I think OP would have remembered FDISKing his backup data and having to
re-create a partition.

As far as data recovery goes...I cited the case of a non-detected drive
merely as a hopeless scenario...
which this is not. Also as I said earlier...data recovery operations do
not destroy data which are on a drive...
it's more a matter of whether the data are recovered or not.

Earlier? Only after I prompted you with a warning about how dangerous this
is. Your first comment was "Google for data recovery software", and that
carries a major risk that OP will think that data recovery software is
needed and should be used, thus risking a large portion of his data. If
you really meant "Run some data recovery software to examine that partition
without attempting to recover any of the files but just to see what's there"
I would not have commented, even though I think it's a waste of time.

Again...the existence of a drive overlay was never answered by the OP
when you had asked that question.

I'll say it again - if he knew this was the problem he had no need to post
his question.

BTW: As flakey as my own news-server may be at times...
I can see more messages on it than if I use the Microsoft server directly.
I have no clue as to why...so I often use whichever seems to be working
best
at the time.

Then you should be framing your replies on the basis that you do not have
the whole picture.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)