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#1
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Why did reformatted C: and reinstalling Win98SE corrupt 2nd hard d
I have a desktop computer running Win98SE. A month ago, a bug developed and
my IE and MSN Messenger web browser app kept crashing. I copied over contents of My Documents to my second Maxtor internal hard drive (D which is connected to an IDE board in my computer. I reformatted my primary hard drive C: and reinstalled win98SE on it. My computer recognizes the former D drive but when I try to read it I get a message that says D:\ is not accessible. A device connected to the system is not ready. Whenever I go to empty the Recycle Bin, I get a dialog box that says the D: drive is not formatted; do you wish to format to which I say no. All my controllers and drives are shown in the hardware manager, no yellow and black ballbats, and messages that devices are functionaing properly. Running fdisk at a DOS prompt and looking at the D: drive, I get:\ Partition 1 Status=A Non-DOS 39072 Mbytes Usage 100% Partition 2 Pri DOS 8 Mbytes UNKNOWN Can my data be retrieved off of it? Why would formatting the C: drive corrupt the D: drive? Did I delete something off of the D: drive before this problem occured which was sitting in the Recycle Bin that when I formatted the C: drive, a dangling link was left somewhere? Would it be worth it to try and take this drive out of my computer and try to read the data in another computer? What about bypassing the IDE controller board on my computer and connecting directly to the motherboard replacing my DVD or CD-RW drive connection? Thank you. |
#2
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Why did reformatted C: and reinstalling Win98SE corrupt 2nd hard d
One possible explanation is that your boot drive (C) had previously been set
up with a partition manager, and the partitioning of the second drive was configured with that partition manager running. When you rebuilt the boot drive the partition manager was not installed. So now the partitioning of the second drive is not recognizable. The system sees the disk as a device, but cannot assign a drive letter because it can't see any partitions that it recognises. For this to be possible, you must have done more than re-formatting the boot drive - you must have also SYSed it and re-partitioned it. This would happen if you booted from floppy to re-install Windows, as the system would see an 'unpartitioned' drive, and would partition and SYS it for you, removing the partition manager. If this is a possibility, then a solution is to re-install the partition manager. This should not require re-partitioning of the boot (C) drive - the partition manager should be able to handle a standard boot drive and a specially-partitioned second drive, to give you access to your files. -- Jeff Richards MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User) " wrote in message ... I have a desktop computer running Win98SE. A month ago, a bug developed and my IE and MSN Messenger web browser app kept crashing. I copied over contents of My Documents to my second Maxtor internal hard drive (D which is connected to an IDE board in my computer. I reformatted my primary hard drive C: and reinstalled win98SE on it. My computer recognizes the former D drive but when I try to read it I get a message that says D:\ is not accessible. A device connected to the system is not ready. Whenever I go to empty the Recycle Bin, I get a dialog box that says the D: drive is not formatted; do you wish to format to which I say no. All my controllers and drives are shown in the hardware manager, no yellow and black ballbats, and messages that devices are functionaing properly. Running fdisk at a DOS prompt and looking at the D: drive, I get:\ Partition 1 Status=A Non-DOS 39072 Mbytes Usage 100% Partition 2 Pri DOS 8 Mbytes UNKNOWN Can my data be retrieved off of it? Why would formatting the C: drive corrupt the D: drive? Did I delete something off of the D: drive before this problem occured which was sitting in the Recycle Bin that when I formatted the C: drive, a dangling link was left somewhere? Would it be worth it to try and take this drive out of my computer and try to read the data in another computer? What about bypassing the IDE controller board on my computer and connecting directly to the motherboard replacing my DVD or CD-RW drive connection? Thank you. |
#3
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Why did reformatted C: and reinstalling Win98SE corrupt 2nd hard d
" wrote in message ... I have a desktop computer running Win98SE. A month ago, a bug developed and my IE and MSN Messenger web browser app kept crashing. I copied over contents of My Documents to my second Maxtor internal hard drive (D which is connected to an IDE board in my computer. I reformatted my primary hard drive C: and reinstalled win98SE on it. My computer recognizes the former D drive but when I try to read it I get a message that says D:\ is not accessible. A device connected to the system is not ready. Whenever I go to empty the Recycle Bin, I get a dialog box that says the D: drive is not formatted; do you wish to format to which I say no. All my controllers and drives are shown in the hardware manager, no yellow and black ballbats, and messages that devices are functionaing properly. Running fdisk at a DOS prompt and looking at the D: drive, I get:\ Partition 1 Status=A Non-DOS 39072 Mbytes Usage 100% Partition 2 Pri DOS 8 Mbytes UNKNOWN Can my data be retrieved off of it? Why would formatting the C: drive corrupt the D: drive? Did I delete something off of the D: drive before this problem occured which was sitting in the Recycle Bin that when I formatted the C: drive, a dangling link was left somewhere? Would it be worth it to try and take this drive out of my computer and try to read the data in another computer? What about bypassing the IDE controller board on my computer and connecting directly to the motherboard replacing my DVD or CD-RW drive connection? Thank you. Does your controller card require drivers not found in Windows? Check device manager. If there is a yellow exclaimation...the drivers will be needed. You may want to try putting the drive in place of your DVD or CD |
#4
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Why did reformatted C: and reinstalling Win98SE corrupt 2nd ha
Jeff,
It actually assigns the drive letter D: with My Computer; just when you click on it, it says Device is not accessible. A device connected to it is not functioning properly. I have Partition Magic which I used on my laptop in an attempt to install Linux but I don't think I tried this with this Desktop computer as it was running Win98SE. Any further ideas. Doug "Jeff Richards" wrote: One possible explanation is that your boot drive (C) had previously been set up with a partition manager, and the partitioning of the second drive was configured with that partition manager running. When you rebuilt the boot drive the partition manager was not installed. So now the partitioning of the second drive is not recognizable. The system sees the disk as a device, but cannot assign a drive letter because it can't see any partitions that it recognises. For this to be possible, you must have done more than re-formatting the boot drive - you must have also SYSed it and re-partitioned it. This would happen if you booted from floppy to re-install Windows, as the system would see an 'unpartitioned' drive, and would partition and SYS it for you, removing the partition manager. If this is a possibility, then a solution is to re-install the partition manager. This should not require re-partitioning of the boot (C) drive - the partition manager should be able to handle a standard boot drive and a specially-partitioned second drive, to give you access to your files. -- Jeff Richards MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User) " wrote in message ... I have a desktop computer running Win98SE. A month ago, a bug developed and my IE and MSN Messenger web browser app kept crashing. I copied over contents of My Documents to my second Maxtor internal hard drive (D which is connected to an IDE board in my computer. I reformatted my primary hard drive C: and reinstalled win98SE on it. My computer recognizes the former D drive but when I try to read it I get a message that says D:\ is not accessible. A device connected to the system is not ready. Whenever I go to empty the Recycle Bin, I get a dialog box that says the D: drive is not formatted; do you wish to format to which I say no. All my controllers and drives are shown in the hardware manager, no yellow and black ballbats, and messages that devices are functionaing properly. Running fdisk at a DOS prompt and looking at the D: drive, I get:\ Partition 1 Status=A Non-DOS 39072 Mbytes Usage 100% Partition 2 Pri DOS 8 Mbytes UNKNOWN Can my data be retrieved off of it? Why would formatting the C: drive corrupt the D: drive? Did I delete something off of the D: drive before this problem occured which was sitting in the Recycle Bin that when I formatted the C: drive, a dangling link was left somewhere? Would it be worth it to try and take this drive out of my computer and try to read the data in another computer? What about bypassing the IDE controller board on my computer and connecting directly to the motherboard replacing my DVD or CD-RW drive connection? Thank you. |
#5
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Why did reformatted C: and reinstalling Win98SE corrupt 2nd ha
Phil,
Thanks, the hard drive shows up under hard drive and the controllers (Primary IDE controller dual fifo) and Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller both show up under hard drive controllers. None have a ballbat on them. Doug "philo" wrote: " wrote in message ... I have a desktop computer running Win98SE. A month ago, a bug developed and my IE and MSN Messenger web browser app kept crashing. I copied over contents of My Documents to my second Maxtor internal hard drive (D which is connected to an IDE board in my computer. I reformatted my primary hard drive C: and reinstalled win98SE on it. My computer recognizes the former D drive but when I try to read it I get a message that says D:\ is not accessible. A device connected to the system is not ready. Whenever I go to empty the Recycle Bin, I get a dialog box that says the D: drive is not formatted; do you wish to format to which I say no. All my controllers and drives are shown in the hardware manager, no yellow and black ballbats, and messages that devices are functionaing properly. Running fdisk at a DOS prompt and looking at the D: drive, I get:\ Partition 1 Status=A Non-DOS 39072 Mbytes Usage 100% Partition 2 Pri DOS 8 Mbytes UNKNOWN Can my data be retrieved off of it? Why would formatting the C: drive corrupt the D: drive? Did I delete something off of the D: drive before this problem occured which was sitting in the Recycle Bin that when I formatted the C: drive, a dangling link was left somewhere? Would it be worth it to try and take this drive out of my computer and try to read the data in another computer? What about bypassing the IDE controller board on my computer and connecting directly to the motherboard replacing my DVD or CD-RW drive connection? Thank you. Does your controller card require drivers not found in Windows? Check device manager. If there is a yellow exclaimation...the drivers will be needed. You may want to try putting the drive in place of your DVD or CD |
#6
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Why did reformatted C: and reinstalling Win98SE corrupt 2nd ha
Do you know whether or not the partition manager was installed on the
original boot drive before you re-built it? Seeing some sort of partition on that second drive is enough to get Windows to assign a drive letter, but when it can't recognise the formatting (or, more likely, when it tries to decode the exact partition format) then you get the device not accessible message. You partition manager may have been something like EZ-Drive or MaxBlast. It's also known as a drive overlay or drive manager. You would know you had it if there was a brief message each time you started, indicating the key to press to do a floppy boot. -- Jeff Richards MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User) " wrote in message ... Jeff, It actually assigns the drive letter D: with My Computer; just when you click on it, it says Device is not accessible. A device connected to it is not functioning properly. I have Partition Magic which I used on my laptop in an attempt to install Linux but I don't think I tried this with this Desktop computer as it was running Win98SE. Any further ideas. Doug "Jeff Richards" wrote: One possible explanation is that your boot drive (C) had previously been set up with a partition manager, and the partitioning of the second drive was configured with that partition manager running. When you rebuilt the boot drive the partition manager was not installed. So now the partitioning of the second drive is not recognizable. The system sees the disk as a device, but cannot assign a drive letter because it can't see any partitions that it recognises. For this to be possible, you must have done more than re-formatting the boot drive - you must have also SYSed it and re-partitioned it. This would happen if you booted from floppy to re-install Windows, as the system would see an 'unpartitioned' drive, and would partition and SYS it for you, removing the partition manager. If this is a possibility, then a solution is to re-install the partition manager. This should not require re-partitioning of the boot (C) drive - the partition manager should be able to handle a standard boot drive and a specially-partitioned second drive, to give you access to your files. -- Jeff Richards MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User) " wrote in message ... I have a desktop computer running Win98SE. A month ago, a bug developed and my IE and MSN Messenger web browser app kept crashing. I copied over contents of My Documents to my second Maxtor internal hard drive (D which is connected to an IDE board in my computer. I reformatted my primary hard drive C: and reinstalled win98SE on it. My computer recognizes the former D drive but when I try to read it I get a message that says D:\ is not accessible. A device connected to the system is not ready. Whenever I go to empty the Recycle Bin, I get a dialog box that says the D: drive is not formatted; do you wish to format to which I say no. All my controllers and drives are shown in the hardware manager, no yellow and black ballbats, and messages that devices are functionaing properly. Running fdisk at a DOS prompt and looking at the D: drive, I get:\ Partition 1 Status=A Non-DOS 39072 Mbytes Usage 100% Partition 2 Pri DOS 8 Mbytes UNKNOWN Can my data be retrieved off of it? Why would formatting the C: drive corrupt the D: drive? Did I delete something off of the D: drive before this problem occured which was sitting in the Recycle Bin that when I formatted the C: drive, a dangling link was left somewhere? Would it be worth it to try and take this drive out of my computer and try to read the data in another computer? What about bypassing the IDE controller board on my computer and connecting directly to the motherboard replacing my DVD or CD-RW drive connection? Thank you. |
#7
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Why did reformatted C: and reinstalling Win98SE corrupt 2nd ha
" wrote in message ... Phil, Thanks, the hard drive shows up under hard drive and the controllers (Primary IDE controller dual fifo) and Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller both show up under hard drive controllers. None have a ballbat on them. Doug Google for data recovery software |
#8
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Why did reformatted C: and reinstalling Win98SE corrupt 2nd ha
That is bad advice because it creates a risk of damaging that backup data.
Reinstalling the overlay is not only by far the most likely fix for the problem, it involves making NO changes to the back up disk. -- Jeff Richards MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User) "philo" wrote in message ... " wrote in message ... Phil, Thanks, the hard drive shows up under hard drive and the controllers (Primary IDE controller dual fifo) and Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller both show up under hard drive controllers. None have a ballbat on them. Doug Google for data recovery software |
#9
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Why did reformatted C: and reinstalling Win98SE corrupt 2nd ha
"Jeff Richards" wrote in message ... That is bad advice because it creates a risk of damaging that backup data. Reinstalling the overlay is not only by far the most likely fix for the problem, it involves making NO changes to the back up disk. I did not see any mention from the OP that he had drive overlay installed originally. I looked at *all* his responses and did not see such. Since my news server is flakey at times... could you kindly cut and past his mention of the overlay...as it sure did not come through at my end. Thank you! If the OP had an overlay when the second drive was added. then the overlay removed...I think that is a very likley reason for the problem... However , formatting a drive and reinstalling the OS would not have removed the overlay. EZ-BIOS or EZ-drive are not terribly easy to remove unless one uses the utility that was originally use to install them. ..so removal of such would have had to been done intentionally. OTOH: Running data recovery software in the read-only mode will not damage existent data on a 2nd drive. don't know where you pulled that one from? Installing data recovery software on a partition where lost data resides is *of course* a dangerous operation...as the data could certainly be over-written...but the OP would be trying to read the non-system drive... so installing data recovery software on the system drive would do nothing to a 2nd drive that is unreadable. Believe me...I do a lot of data recovery work and have been successful in performing recoveries in most instances. Drives that are not recognized by the bios are generally hopeless of course. |
#10
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Why did reformatted C: and reinstalling Win98SE corrupt 2nd ha
The OP is not aware of the installation of the drive overlay because it was
done so long ago and has been invisible since then, except perhaps for a small message at startup about booting from floppy. If he knew about it he wouldn't need to ask for help here. You don't need that confirmation from the OP to know that is the problem - you only need to look properly at the description provided - a system that was working OK, a rebuild of the boot drive and now a secondary drive with one large (apparently) unpartitioned area and a small unformatted DOS partition. It is an exact description of a missing overlay. Any work to recover files from that drive that does not involve reinstating the overlay is going to be dangerous. A typical scenario is that about 80% of the files look recoverable, which may tempt OP into doing the recover, when the data would be 100% recoverable with the simple installation of the overlay. However I have also seen conditions where 100% of the files are reported as recoverable because the track layout happened to match the FAT size, but of course when the recovery is attempted only about 80% are actually intact. OP has just re-built the boot drive. Therefore, once the data is recovered he can simply rebuild it again to get rid of the overlay. The drive IS recognised by the BIOS, as originally stated "My computer recognizes the former D drive...". Formatting the drive would not have removed the overlay, but booting from another device and running Windows setup would - OP has not stated exactly how he installed Windows. I strongly recommend that you connect directly to the MS server to avoid missing parts of conversations due to a flaky server. -- Jeff Richards MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User) "philo" wrote in message ... "Jeff Richards" wrote in message ... That is bad advice because it creates a risk of damaging that backup data. Reinstalling the overlay is not only by far the most likely fix for the problem, it involves making NO changes to the back up disk. I did not see any mention from the OP that he had drive overlay installed originally. I looked at *all* his responses and did not see such. Since my news server is flakey at times... could you kindly cut and past his mention of the overlay...as it sure did not come through at my end. Thank you! If the OP had an overlay when the second drive was added. then the overlay removed...I think that is a very likley reason for the problem... However , formatting a drive and reinstalling the OS would not have removed the overlay. EZ-BIOS or EZ-drive are not terribly easy to remove unless one uses the utility that was originally use to install them. ..so removal of such would have had to been done intentionally. OTOH: Running data recovery software in the read-only mode will not damage existent data on a 2nd drive. don't know where you pulled that one from? Installing data recovery software on a partition where lost data resides is *of course* a dangerous operation...as the data could certainly be over-written...but the OP would be trying to read the non-system drive... so installing data recovery software on the system drive would do nothing to a 2nd drive that is unreadable. Believe me...I do a lot of data recovery work and have been successful in performing recoveries in most instances. Drives that are not recognized by the bios are generally hopeless of course. |
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