HELP - I've lost my FS Hard Drive

[Guest BobL]

This is a cross post from the hardware forum for maximum visibility. I sure hope someone can help with thisI had everything flight sim on a separate physical hard drive and I mean everything. I have acquired a new computer system and removed the physical HD from the old and installed it in the new, thinking XP would automatically find it (with it's old volume name d:/flight sim). The operating system is XP Home EditionThe computer BIOS recognizes the HD. You can see it sitting there under Device Manager and the disk management tools show it present, active, no conflicts and ready status but with no drive letter or volume name.My Computer/Explorer however, doesn't see it at all. I've tried un-installing it and re-installing it per the XP instructions but I don't get the 'found new hardware wizard' that it said I would. It reinstalls the HD in the background but doesn't assign a drive letter.It has a single FAT32 partition, installed by the old computer. I've tried taking it back to the old computer and it can't find it either. The same thing applies. The Device manager sees the HD but it's not a drive. It's just sitting there with no volume assigned.What can I do to get this HD recognized?BobL

[Guest PaulL01]

I'm not an expert Bob, but the first thing a can think of for you is if you have the jumpers set for a master and slave setup between the two drives, I would guess that you have since its there in the BIOS, is that right?And you are using it on the first IDE connector?What is the drive model?Paul

[Guest UweR]

Hi, from what you have written I

[Guest BobL]

Here you go and thank you in advance for the help. The non-c: drive is the one with about 30GB of FS stuff (scenery, aircraft, FS2000, add-ons, keys, etc...THis is supposed to be my backup!!

[Guest]

Hi Bob,Right click the non-mapped drive and select the "Change Drive Letter" (or similar). You should be able to choose any drive letter you wish. You can also re-map the CD, DVD what-have-you drives to be lower than your hard drives as well.Take care, http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

[Guest BobL]

Everything is dimmed except "Delete Partition...."And Hi Elrond, hope all is well...BobL

[Guest]

Hi Bob,Actually, taking a second look at your screenshot, it looks as if the partition is completely empty (Capacity: 71.59GB, Free Space: 71.59GB) and unformatted (doesn't show the filesystem at all such as Fat32 or NTFS). That may indicate that the partition has been corrupted if you say it was full of FS2002 stuff before.When you right-click the partition itself in the lower part of the screen (where its "scored" to show its selected) everything is greyed except Delete Partition? If so, it does seem it is corrupt. If you still have the old system around, put the drive back in there and see if you can access it properly. If not, you have a problem.If the partition is indeed corrupt, all is not lost. As long as nothing has been written to the drive after the corruption, a tool like EasyRecovery should be able to get back all the information on the drive (specially since the OS is able to see the drive itself - if not map it). Situations like these are why I highly recommend XP to my customers. Its reliability is light-years ahead of 9x systems when it comes to situations like these.I'll be here for the next two hours or so, so maybe a chat would be in order... Let me know here if you see this soon...Good luck, http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

[Avcomware 1]

Hi, Bob. If you had an OS on that HD, your HD was bootable, your new system may not see it, uless you remove the old OS. To prove that your HD is OK, try to set up as as C:, jumpers and all, and then see if the OS is on there. Then you may want to set your new drive as D:/second drive, move your files and try to remove your old OS, from your C: and then reconfigure. Good luck. TV

[Guest BobL]

Hi TVI've already thought that but in a different light. There was not an OS on that drive but I had the space so I tried to install my old copy of ME. It wouldn't accept it. It kept telling me I needed to complete the instructions in the file HDBLOCK.TXT on the ME CD. Care to guess what file is NOT on my Restoration Disk from Gateway? Based on the name of the file, I suspect it has some type of format or partition function which would be self-destructive. At any rate, I'm still lost.I think I'll try a chat with Elrond if I can.BobL

[Guest BobL]

Elrond, I'm here also.Just so you know, when I transferred the HD, these are the steps I tookRemoved external power supplyRemoved case coverDisconnected HD Power SupplyDisconnected IDE cableRemoved driveand then, at the new computerOpened caseSet existing HD jumpers for a masterInstalled transferred driveInstalled IDE cableInstalled HD Power supplyBootedEdit: And I have EasyRecovery Lite running right now. Let you know

[Guest UweR]

Hi Bob,from what you wrote, I assume your harddrive didn

[Guest]

Sorry about that Bob... Litte emergency here that took me away, but taken care of now. If you're still around, open this url and I'll chat with you:http://www.avsim.com/irc/launch.htmlOnce you type your name and join the channel, type this in the "Say" box and press the "Say" button:/join #ElrondI'll be here for about an hour baring unforseen circumstances... http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

[brucek 38]

Hi Elrond and Bob,If you guys figure this out in the chat, is it possible to let us know the outcome?Thanks,Bruce.

[Guest]

Hi Bruce,Sure... Although I haven't yet hooked up with Bob yet. It seems pretty cut and dry now though: It looks like Bob tried to install WinMe on the drive from a Gateway supplied disc. This most likely isn't a real WinMe disc, but a system restore disc provided by Gateway that includes WinMe on it. Upon install, it most likely wipped the partition.EasyRecovery should be able to restore all the information still on the drive however.Take care, http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

[Guest]

Bob,Was this drive partitioned with anything other than the FDISK utility? (Disk Manager, et al)On a more grim note - when was the last time that you scanned for viruses? There are some viruses that will physically move the FAT so as to make everything on the drive inaccessible unless the virus is resident in memory.Doug Dawson