My daugther's hard disk become unallocated !

The PC has 2 hard disks. the boot one was created in november with a fresh
windows home XP . It replaced the old Hitachi disk which was very slow.
The Hitachi was installed as a slave primary to access the data.
Last week, my daugther asked me to retrieve her personal contacts which were
on the Hitachi. So I had to connect it as primary master and booted on it.
That worked fine.
When returning to the actual boot, the Hitachi disappeared and Windows sees
it as unallocated.
I suppect my USB memory key as the culprit.
Are the data lost ?
What to do know ?
Please help.

Hello:
This may be a more or less mechanical issue: jumper settings? cables tight?
correct cables?
HTH and good luck!
Petrus

"Sydney" wrote in message
...
The PC has 2 hard disks. the boot one was created in november with a fresh
windows home XP . It replaced the old Hitachi disk which was very slow.
The Hitachi was installed as a slave primary to access the data.
Last week, my daugther asked me to retrieve her personal contacts which
were on the Hitachi. So I had to connect it as primary master and booted
on it. That worked fine.
When returning to the actual boot, the Hitachi disappeared and Windows
sees it as unallocated.
I suppect my USB memory key as the culprit.
Are the data lost ?
What to do know ?
Please help.

No it is not All HDs are with cable select. Thanks anyhow

"Petrus Tax" a écrit dans le message de groupe de
discussion : ...
Hello:
This may be a more or less mechanical issue: jumper settings? cables
tight? correct cables?
HTH and good luck!
Petrus

"Sydney" wrote in message
...
The PC has 2 hard disks. the boot one was created in november with a
fresh windows home XP . It replaced the old Hitachi disk which was very
slow.
The Hitachi was installed as a slave primary to access the data.
Last week, my daugther asked me to retrieve her personal contacts which
were on the Hitachi. So I had to connect it as primary master and booted
on it. That worked fine.
When returning to the actual boot, the Hitachi disappeared and Windows
sees it as unallocated.
I suppect my USB memory key as the culprit.
Are the data lost ?
What to do know ?
Please help.

Sydney wrote:
No it is not All HDs are with cable select. Thanks anyhow

I assume this is a desktop computer ?

First step, is to enter the BIOS and verify that the BIOS sees
two disk drives. There may be an IDE setup screen, which reports
the detected hard drives and optical drive. If the ASCII text
name of the drive is distorted, then you'd know there was a
communications problem on the cable. The BIOS screen shows the
results of the minimum effort to talk to the drive.

If you're not seeing the disk in the BIOS, there is no point
in working to find it in Windows.

You'd review your cable setup and jumpers, to see if you missed
something. Do both drives have power cables plugged in ? Is
the power connector seated ? Are there any burned pins on the
power connector ? Verify that if there are two drives on the
cable, they're Master:Slave or CS:CS (and that the cable is
80 wire if CS:CS is chosen).

If the drives are both detected in the BIOS, then you can use some
OS to work on them. I use a Linux LiveCD, such as Ubuntu or Knoppix, to
work on Windows disks. Linux can now read NTFS and FAT32, so it is no
problem to work there.

If they're visible in the BIOS, your next stop could be
Disk Management in Windows. If you don't know how to find it,
basically just run diskmgmt.msc . If you see two Disk entries
but no partitions on the second disk, then it could be that
the MBR (Master Boot Sector, that holds the four primary partition
entries) is corrupted.

The "TestDisk" program is an example of a free utility that can
examine a disk and try to reconstruct the MBR. In the process of
doing that, the program will be doing lots of reads on the disk,
so it would give you some idea whether the disk is dying or not,
just based on whether any errors are thrown or not.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

TestDisk isn't likely to be the solution to your problem. I find
about 50% of the time, if I were to accept what it found, it would
mess up the disk. It requires knowledge from the user, as to what it
finds is reasonable or not. For example, if you know the disk had
three partitions (C:, D:, hidden recovery) and it didn't find three
entries, you'd know better than to accept its findings.

In any case, at least work up to the step of using diskmgmt.msc
to prove the disk is detected. If the disk is not there, you have
to work on getting the hardware to access it, before any more progress
can be made.

If a disk has an internal failure, they're designed to not respond
in the event of failure. I disagree with the design philosophy, but there
it is. For example, some disks "disappear", when a defect table used
in firmware overflows. So in some cases, the disk dying, is not
mechanical or logical, and is a firmware bug. At least some firmware
inspired bugs can easily be fixed by data recovery companies.

In other cases, your own senses can give you an idea what happened to
the drive. I had an old 2GB drive, and one day when I turned on the
computer, I heard a loud "sproing" sound. That was the head assembly
getting snagged in the landing ramp and being torn to shreds. When
you hear a noise like that, you don't need a copy of TestDisk :-(

Paul


"Petrus Tax" a écrit dans le message de
groupe de discussion : ...
Hello:
This may be a more or less mechanical issue: jumper settings? cables
tight? correct cables?
HTH and good luck!
Petrus

"Sydney" wrote in message
...
The PC has 2 hard disks. the boot one was created in november with a
fresh windows home XP . It replaced the old Hitachi disk which was
very slow.
The Hitachi was installed as a slave primary to access the data.
Last week, my daugther asked me to retrieve her personal contacts
which were on the Hitachi. So I had to connect it as primary master
and booted on it. That worked fine.
When returning to the actual boot, the Hitachi disappeared and
Windows sees it as unallocated.
I suppect my USB memory key as the culprit.
Are the data lost ?
What to do know ?
Please help.

"Paul" a écrit dans le message de groupe de discussion :
...
Sydney wrote:
No it is not All HDs are with cable select. Thanks anyhow

I assume this is a desktop computer ?

First step, is to enter the BIOS and verify that the BIOS sees
two disk drives. There may be an IDE setup screen, which reports
the detected hard drives and optical drive. If the ASCII text
name of the drive is distorted, then you'd know there was a
communications problem on the cable. The BIOS screen shows the
results of the minimum effort to talk to the drive.

If you're not seeing the disk in the BIOS, there is no point
in working to find it in Windows.

You'd review your cable setup and jumpers, to see if you missed
something. Do both drives have power cables plugged in ? Is
the power connector seated ? Are there any burned pins on the
power connector ? Verify that if there are two drives on the
cable, they're Master:Slave or CS:CS (and that the cable is
80 wire if CS:CS is chosen).

If the drives are both detected in the BIOS, then you can use some
OS to work on them. I use a Linux LiveCD, such as Ubuntu or Knoppix, to
work on Windows disks. Linux can now read NTFS and FAT32, so it is no
problem to work there.

If they're visible in the BIOS, your next stop could be
Disk Management in Windows. If you don't know how to find it,
basically just run diskmgmt.msc . If you see two Disk entries
but no partitions on the second disk, then it could be that
the MBR (Master Boot Sector, that holds the four primary partition
entries) is corrupted.

The "TestDisk" program is an example of a free utility that can
examine a disk and try to reconstruct the MBR. In the process of
doing that, the program will be doing lots of reads on the disk,
so it would give you some idea whether the disk is dying or not,
just based on whether any errors are thrown or not.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

TestDisk isn't likely to be the solution to your problem. I find
about 50% of the time, if I were to accept what it found, it would
mess up the disk. It requires knowledge from the user, as to what it
finds is reasonable or not. For example, if you know the disk had
three partitions (C:, D:, hidden recovery) and it didn't find three
entries, you'd know better than to accept its findings.

In any case, at least work up to the step of using diskmgmt.msc
to prove the disk is detected. If the disk is not there, you have
to work on getting the hardware to access it, before any more progress
can be made.

If a disk has an internal failure, they're designed to not respond
in the event of failure. I disagree with the design philosophy, but there
it is. For example, some disks "disappear", when a defect table used
in firmware overflows. So in some cases, the disk dying, is not
mechanical or logical, and is a firmware bug. At least some firmware
inspired bugs can easily be fixed by data recovery companies.

In other cases, your own senses can give you an idea what happened to
the drive. I had an old 2GB drive, and one day when I turned on the
computer, I heard a loud "sproing" sound. That was the head assembly
getting snagged in the landing ramp and being torn to shreds. When
you hear a noise like that, you don't need a copy of TestDisk :-(

Paul


"Petrus Tax" a écrit dans le message de groupe
de discussion : ...
Hello:
This may be a more or less mechanical issue: jumper settings? cables
tight? correct cables?
HTH and good luck!
Petrus

"Sydney" wrote in message
...
The PC has 2 hard disks. the boot one was created in november with a
fresh windows home XP . It replaced the old Hitachi disk which was
very slow.
The Hitachi was installed as a slave primary to access the data.
Last week, my daugther asked me to retrieve her personal contacts which
were on the Hitachi. So I had to connect it as primary master and
booted on it. That worked fine.
When returning to the actual boot, the Hitachi disappeared and Windows
sees it as unallocated.
I suppect my USB memory key as the culprit.
Are the data lost ?
What to do know ?
Please help.

Paul, Thanks for this thorough answer and comments. This is a lot of care.
The Bios sees two disks. Cables setup and jumpers are correct;
Windows disk manager sees a 137 Go not allocated disk (it is 160 Go ) and
starts the init and conversion assistant for the disk.I refused that;
Windows explorer nor disk defrag do not see the disk;
Ubuntu 9.04 (Linux ) sees a 8.2 Go disk with 814 bad sectors. It realocated
809 sectors.
No change in windows behavior after that.
Should I run TestDisk under Ubuntu since windows does see the disk ?

your advice is highly appreciated

"Sydney" wrote in message
...

"Paul" a écrit dans le message de groupe de discussion
: ...
Sydney wrote:
No it is not All HDs are with cable select. Thanks anyhow

I assume this is a desktop computer ?

First step, is to enter the BIOS and verify that the BIOS sees
two disk drives. There may be an IDE setup screen, which reports
the detected hard drives and optical drive. If the ASCII text
name of the drive is distorted, then you'd know there was a
communications problem on the cable. The BIOS screen shows the
results of the minimum effort to talk to the drive.

If you're not seeing the disk in the BIOS, there is no point
in working to find it in Windows.

You'd review your cable setup and jumpers, to see if you missed
something. Do both drives have power cables plugged in ? Is
the power connector seated ? Are there any burned pins on the
power connector ? Verify that if there are two drives on the
cable, they're Master:Slave or CS:CS (and that the cable is
80 wire if CS:CS is chosen).

If the drives are both detected in the BIOS, then you can use some
OS to work on them. I use a Linux LiveCD, such as Ubuntu or Knoppix, to
work on Windows disks. Linux can now read NTFS and FAT32, so it is no
problem to work there.

If they're visible in the BIOS, your next stop could be
Disk Management in Windows. If you don't know how to find it,
basically just run diskmgmt.msc . If you see two Disk entries
but no partitions on the second disk, then it could be that
the MBR (Master Boot Sector, that holds the four primary partition
entries) is corrupted.

The "TestDisk" program is an example of a free utility that can
examine a disk and try to reconstruct the MBR. In the process of
doing that, the program will be doing lots of reads on the disk,
so it would give you some idea whether the disk is dying or not,
just based on whether any errors are thrown or not.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

TestDisk isn't likely to be the solution to your problem. I find
about 50% of the time, if I were to accept what it found, it would
mess up the disk. It requires knowledge from the user, as to what it
finds is reasonable or not. For example, if you know the disk had
three partitions (C:, D:, hidden recovery) and it didn't find three
entries, you'd know better than to accept its findings.

In any case, at least work up to the step of using diskmgmt.msc
to prove the disk is detected. If the disk is not there, you have
to work on getting the hardware to access it, before any more progress
can be made.

If a disk has an internal failure, they're designed to not respond
in the event of failure. I disagree with the design philosophy, but there
it is. For example, some disks "disappear", when a defect table used
in firmware overflows. So in some cases, the disk dying, is not
mechanical or logical, and is a firmware bug. At least some firmware
inspired bugs can easily be fixed by data recovery companies.

In other cases, your own senses can give you an idea what happened to
the drive. I had an old 2GB drive, and one day when I turned on the
computer, I heard a loud "sproing" sound. That was the head assembly
getting snagged in the landing ramp and being torn to shreds. When
you hear a noise like that, you don't need a copy of TestDisk :-(

Paul


"Petrus Tax" a écrit dans le message de
groupe de discussion : ...
Hello:
This may be a more or less mechanical issue: jumper settings? cables
tight? correct cables?
HTH and good luck!
Petrus

"Sydney" wrote in message
...
The PC has 2 hard disks. the boot one was created in november with a
fresh windows home XP . It replaced the old Hitachi disk which was
very slow.
The Hitachi was installed as a slave primary to access the data.
Last week, my daugther asked me to retrieve her personal contacts
which were on the Hitachi. So I had to connect it as primary master
and booted on it. That worked fine.
When returning to the actual boot, the Hitachi disappeared and Windows
sees it as unallocated.
I suppect my USB memory key as the culprit.
Are the data lost ?
What to do know ?
Please help.

Paul, Thanks for this thorough answer and comments. This is a lot of care.
The Bios sees two disks. Cables setup and jumpers are correct;
Windows disk manager sees a 137 Go not allocated disk (it is 160 Go ) and
starts the init and conversion assistant for the disk.I refused that;
Windows explorer nor disk defrag do not see the disk;
Ubuntu 9.04 (Linux ) sees a 8.2 Go disk with 814 bad sectors. It
realocated 809 sectors.
No change in windows behavior after that.
Should I run TestDisk under Ubuntu since windows does see the disk ?

your advice is highly appreciated


It might be worth running a Hitachi diagnostics tool to check if the drive
is in order. Since you didn't mention which drive you have of theirs you
would need to confirm by checking before downloading the proper tool.


http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

--
Jan Alter

"Jan Alter" a écrit dans le message de groupe de
discussion : ...

"Sydney" wrote in message
...

"Paul" a écrit dans le message de groupe de
discussion : ...
Sydney wrote:
No it is not All HDs are with cable select. Thanks anyhow

I assume this is a desktop computer ?

First step, is to enter the BIOS and verify that the BIOS sees
two disk drives. There may be an IDE setup screen, which reports
the detected hard drives and optical drive. If the ASCII text
name of the drive is distorted, then you'd know there was a
communications problem on the cable. The BIOS screen shows the
results of the minimum effort to talk to the drive.

If you're not seeing the disk in the BIOS, there is no point
in working to find it in Windows.

You'd review your cable setup and jumpers, to see if you missed
something. Do both drives have power cables plugged in ? Is
the power connector seated ? Are there any burned pins on the
power connector ? Verify that if there are two drives on the
cable, they're Master:Slave or CS:CS (and that the cable is
80 wire if CS:CS is chosen).

If the drives are both detected in the BIOS, then you can use some
OS to work on them. I use a Linux LiveCD, such as Ubuntu or Knoppix, to
work on Windows disks. Linux can now read NTFS and FAT32, so it is no
problem to work there.

If they're visible in the BIOS, your next stop could be
Disk Management in Windows. If you don't know how to find it,
basically just run diskmgmt.msc . If you see two Disk entries
but no partitions on the second disk, then it could be that
the MBR (Master Boot Sector, that holds the four primary partition
entries) is corrupted.

The "TestDisk" program is an example of a free utility that can
examine a disk and try to reconstruct the MBR. In the process of
doing that, the program will be doing lots of reads on the disk,
so it would give you some idea whether the disk is dying or not,
just based on whether any errors are thrown or not.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

TestDisk isn't likely to be the solution to your problem. I find
about 50% of the time, if I were to accept what it found, it would
mess up the disk. It requires knowledge from the user, as to what it
finds is reasonable or not. For example, if you know the disk had
three partitions (C:, D:, hidden recovery) and it didn't find three
entries, you'd know better than to accept its findings.

In any case, at least work up to the step of using diskmgmt.msc
to prove the disk is detected. If the disk is not there, you have
to work on getting the hardware to access it, before any more progress
can be made.

If a disk has an internal failure, they're designed to not respond
in the event of failure. I disagree with the design philosophy, but
there
it is. For example, some disks "disappear", when a defect table used
in firmware overflows. So in some cases, the disk dying, is not
mechanical or logical, and is a firmware bug. At least some firmware
inspired bugs can easily be fixed by data recovery companies.

In other cases, your own senses can give you an idea what happened to
the drive. I had an old 2GB drive, and one day when I turned on the
computer, I heard a loud "sproing" sound. That was the head assembly
getting snagged in the landing ramp and being torn to shreds. When
you hear a noise like that, you don't need a copy of TestDisk :-(

Paul


"Petrus Tax" a écrit dans le message de
groupe de discussion :
...
Hello:
This may be a more or less mechanical issue: jumper settings? cables
tight? correct cables?
HTH and good luck!
Petrus

"Sydney" wrote in message
...
The PC has 2 hard disks. the boot one was created in november with a
fresh windows home XP . It replaced the old Hitachi disk which was
very slow.
The Hitachi was installed as a slave primary to access the data.
Last week, my daugther asked me to retrieve her personal contacts
which were on the Hitachi. So I had to connect it as primary master
and booted on it. That worked fine.
When returning to the actual boot, the Hitachi disappeared and
Windows sees it as unallocated.
I suppect my USB memory key as the culprit.
Are the data lost ?
What to do know ?
Please help.

Paul, Thanks for this thorough answer and comments. This is a lot of
care.
The Bios sees two disks. Cables setup and jumpers are correct;
Windows disk manager sees a 137 Go not allocated disk (it is 160 Go ) and
starts the init and conversion assistant for the disk.I refused that;
Windows explorer nor disk defrag do not see the disk;
Ubuntu 9.04 (Linux ) sees a 8.2 Go disk with 814 bad sectors. It
realocated 809 sectors.
No change in windows behavior after that.
Should I run TestDisk under Ubuntu since windows does see the disk ?

your advice is highly appreciated


It might be worth running a Hitachi diagnostics tool to check if the drive
is in order. Since you didn't mention which drive you have of theirs you
would need to confirm by checking before downloading the proper tool.


http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

--
Jan Alter



The only diagnostic tool I see in your link is "OGT diagnostic tool".
It does'not refer to the Dekstar model which I have.

"Sydney" wrote in message
...
"Jan Alter" a écrit dans le message de groupe de
discussion : ...

"Sydney" wrote in message
...

"Paul" a écrit dans le message de groupe de
discussion : ...
Sydney wrote:
No it is not All HDs are with cable select. Thanks anyhow

I assume this is a desktop computer ?

First step, is to enter the BIOS and verify that the BIOS sees
two disk drives. There may be an IDE setup screen, which reports
the detected hard drives and optical drive. If the ASCII text
name of the drive is distorted, then you'd know there was a
communications problem on the cable. The BIOS screen shows the
results of the minimum effort to talk to the drive.

If you're not seeing the disk in the BIOS, there is no point
in working to find it in Windows.

You'd review your cable setup and jumpers, to see if you missed
something. Do both drives have power cables plugged in ? Is
the power connector seated ? Are there any burned pins on the
power connector ? Verify that if there are two drives on the
cable, they're Master:Slave or CS:CS (and that the cable is
80 wire if CS:CS is chosen).

If the drives are both detected in the BIOS, then you can use some
OS to work on them. I use a Linux LiveCD, such as Ubuntu or Knoppix, to
work on Windows disks. Linux can now read NTFS and FAT32, so it is no
problem to work there.

If they're visible in the BIOS, your next stop could be
Disk Management in Windows. If you don't know how to find it,
basically just run diskmgmt.msc . If you see two Disk entries
but no partitions on the second disk, then it could be that
the MBR (Master Boot Sector, that holds the four primary partition
entries) is corrupted.

The "TestDisk" program is an example of a free utility that can
examine a disk and try to reconstruct the MBR. In the process of
doing that, the program will be doing lots of reads on the disk,
so it would give you some idea whether the disk is dying or not,
just based on whether any errors are thrown or not.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

TestDisk isn't likely to be the solution to your problem. I find
about 50% of the time, if I were to accept what it found, it would
mess up the disk. It requires knowledge from the user, as to what it
finds is reasonable or not. For example, if you know the disk had
three partitions (C:, D:, hidden recovery) and it didn't find three
entries, you'd know better than to accept its findings.

In any case, at least work up to the step of using diskmgmt.msc
to prove the disk is detected. If the disk is not there, you have
to work on getting the hardware to access it, before any more progress
can be made.

If a disk has an internal failure, they're designed to not respond
in the event of failure. I disagree with the design philosophy, but
there
it is. For example, some disks "disappear", when a defect table used
in firmware overflows. So in some cases, the disk dying, is not
mechanical or logical, and is a firmware bug. At least some firmware
inspired bugs can easily be fixed by data recovery companies.

In other cases, your own senses can give you an idea what happened to
the drive. I had an old 2GB drive, and one day when I turned on the
computer, I heard a loud "sproing" sound. That was the head assembly
getting snagged in the landing ramp and being torn to shreds. When
you hear a noise like that, you don't need a copy of TestDisk :-(

Paul


"Petrus Tax" a écrit dans le message de
groupe de discussion :
...
Hello:
This may be a more or less mechanical issue: jumper settings? cables
tight? correct cables?
HTH and good luck!
Petrus

"Sydney" wrote in message
...
The PC has 2 hard disks. the boot one was created in november with a
fresh windows home XP . It replaced the old Hitachi disk which was
very slow.
The Hitachi was installed as a slave primary to access the data.
Last week, my daugther asked me to retrieve her personal contacts
which were on the Hitachi. So I had to connect it as primary master
and booted on it. That worked fine.
When returning to the actual boot, the Hitachi disappeared and
Windows sees it as unallocated.
I suppect my USB memory key as the culprit.
Are the data lost ?
What to do know ?
Please help.

Paul, Thanks for this thorough answer and comments. This is a lot of
care.
The Bios sees two disks. Cables setup and jumpers are correct;
Windows disk manager sees a 137 Go not allocated disk (it is 160 Go )
and starts the init and conversion assistant for the disk.I refused
that;
Windows explorer nor disk defrag do not see the disk;
Ubuntu 9.04 (Linux ) sees a 8.2 Go disk with 814 bad sectors. It
realocated 809 sectors.
No change in windows behavior after that.
Should I run TestDisk under Ubuntu since windows does see the disk ?

your advice is highly appreciated


It might be worth running a Hitachi diagnostics tool to check if the
drive is in order. Since you didn't mention which drive you have of
theirs you would need to confirm by checking before downloading the
proper tool.


http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

--
Jan Alter



The only diagnostic tool I see in your link is "OGT diagnostic tool".
It does'not refer to the Dekstar model which I have.



Download the 'CD Image' on that page and burn the ISO. It should give you a
bootable disk that should work with the Deskstar. Read the pdf for it.

--
Jan Alter

Sydney wrote:

"Paul" a écrit dans le message de groupe de
discussion : ...
Sydney wrote:
No it is not All HDs are with cable select. Thanks anyhow

I assume this is a desktop computer ?

First step, is to enter the BIOS and verify that the BIOS sees
two disk drives. There may be an IDE setup screen, which reports
the detected hard drives and optical drive. If the ASCII text
name of the drive is distorted, then you'd know there was a
communications problem on the cable. The BIOS screen shows the
results of the minimum effort to talk to the drive.

If you're not seeing the disk in the BIOS, there is no point
in working to find it in Windows.

You'd review your cable setup and jumpers, to see if you missed
something. Do both drives have power cables plugged in ? Is
the power connector seated ? Are there any burned pins on the
power connector ? Verify that if there are two drives on the
cable, they're Master:Slave or CS:CS (and that the cable is
80 wire if CS:CS is chosen).

If the drives are both detected in the BIOS, then you can use some
OS to work on them. I use a Linux LiveCD, such as Ubuntu or Knoppix, to
work on Windows disks. Linux can now read NTFS and FAT32, so it is no
problem to work there.

If they're visible in the BIOS, your next stop could be
Disk Management in Windows. If you don't know how to find it,
basically just run diskmgmt.msc . If you see two Disk entries
but no partitions on the second disk, then it could be that
the MBR (Master Boot Sector, that holds the four primary partition
entries) is corrupted.

The "TestDisk" program is an example of a free utility that can
examine a disk and try to reconstruct the MBR. In the process of
doing that, the program will be doing lots of reads on the disk,
so it would give you some idea whether the disk is dying or not,
just based on whether any errors are thrown or not.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

TestDisk isn't likely to be the solution to your problem. I find
about 50% of the time, if I were to accept what it found, it would
mess up the disk. It requires knowledge from the user, as to what it
finds is reasonable or not. For example, if you know the disk had
three partitions (C:, D:, hidden recovery) and it didn't find three
entries, you'd know better than to accept its findings.

In any case, at least work up to the step of using diskmgmt.msc
to prove the disk is detected. If the disk is not there, you have
to work on getting the hardware to access it, before any more progress
can be made.

If a disk has an internal failure, they're designed to not respond
in the event of failure. I disagree with the design philosophy, but there
it is. For example, some disks "disappear", when a defect table used
in firmware overflows. So in some cases, the disk dying, is not
mechanical or logical, and is a firmware bug. At least some firmware
inspired bugs can easily be fixed by data recovery companies.

In other cases, your own senses can give you an idea what happened to
the drive. I had an old 2GB drive, and one day when I turned on the
computer, I heard a loud "sproing" sound. That was the head assembly
getting snagged in the landing ramp and being torn to shreds. When
you hear a noise like that, you don't need a copy of TestDisk :-(

Paul


"Petrus Tax" a écrit dans le message de
groupe de discussion : ...
Hello:
This may be a more or less mechanical issue: jumper settings? cables
tight? correct cables?
HTH and good luck!
Petrus

"Sydney" wrote in message
...
The PC has 2 hard disks. the boot one was created in november with
a fresh windows home XP . It replaced the old Hitachi disk which
was very slow.
The Hitachi was installed as a slave primary to access the data.
Last week, my daugther asked me to retrieve her personal contacts
which were on the Hitachi. So I had to connect it as primary master
and booted on it. That worked fine.
When returning to the actual boot, the Hitachi disappeared and
Windows sees it as unallocated.
I suppect my USB memory key as the culprit.
Are the data lost ?
What to do know ?
Please help.

Paul, Thanks for this thorough answer and comments. This is a lot of care.
The Bios sees two disks. Cables setup and jumpers are correct;
Windows disk manager sees a 137 Go not allocated disk (it is 160 Go )
and starts the init and conversion assistant for the disk.I refused that;
Windows explorer nor disk defrag do not see the disk;
Ubuntu 9.04 (Linux ) sees a 8.2 Go disk with 814 bad sectors. It
realocated 809 sectors.
No change in windows behavior after that.
Should I run TestDisk under Ubuntu since windows does see the disk ?

your advice is highly appreciated

My first concern is, your OS reporting a "137 Go" disk. That means
your WinXP doesn't have enough Service Pack installed.

Imagine the following scenario. You have a 160GB disk. It has a single
partition that uses all the space. Now, connect the disk to an OS that
only supports up to 137GB. The OS attempts a write to a location on
the disk, above the 137GB mark. Instantly, the file system is corrupted,
due to address rollover on the IDE interface.

This document addresses the issue a bit. It says, for Windows XP, you should
be using Service Pack 1 or higher. If all you have is the original
WinXP Gold release, then you could cause problems for the information
on that disk. If you look in your Control Panels, for the "System" one,
it will tell you the current Service Pack. Mine says "Version 2002
Service Pack 3".

http://web.archive.org/web/200701210...c/tp/137gb.pdf

I would not run any tools on the disk, until I was absolutely sure
the computer you're using can handle a 160GB disk properly.

The Seagate document suggests an UltraATA/133 PCI controller card
as one solution. Another solution would be to use a USB to IDE
disk enclosure for the hard drive. As far as I know, the USB
Mass Storage driver comes in Service Pack 1 or later.

The Ubuntu disc reporting an 8.2GB disk, suggests the motherboard
is reporting a strange CHS value. The motherboard should be
set for LBA, in which case a bogus value of CHS is used to
signal that LBA is in use. I don't think I've ever had a Linux
CD do that here. I have one 10 year old computer, that only supports
up to 137GB in hardware, and don't remember seeing that as a
symptom (8.2GB disks). I'd want to drop down into the BIOS setup screens
and verify whether someone has been messing around with the settings
there.

CHS can only handle storage up to a certain size, and then a
magic CHS value is supposed to indicate to the system that
LBA is to be used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder_Head_Sector

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/doc...isk-HOWTO.html

"Hard drives over 8.4 GB are supposed to report their geometry as 16383/16/63.
This in effect means that the `geometry' is obsolete, and the total disk size
can no longer be computed from the geometry, but is found in the LBA capacity
field returned by the IDENTIFY command. Hard drives over 137.4 GB are supposed
to report an LBA capacity of 0xfffffff = 268435455 sectors (137438952960 bytes).
Now the actual disk size is found in the new 48-capacity field."

In any case, you're not ready for tools like TestDisk, until
the issues with seeing the disk fully are resolved.

On my oldest computer, I can plug in my Promise Ultra133 TX2
PCI card, as a means to handle large disks (160GB or larger).
Promise has stopped making those, but if you have one in your
junk box, install it and its driver, and give that a try.

To summarize:

1) To handle a 160GB disk, both the hardware and the operating system,
must be able to deal with the large disk. You have received two
indications (137 Go in Windows, 8.2 Go in Linux), that something
is wrong with the reported geometry, as if the hardware isn't
capable of operating with a large drive.

2) Windows will refuse to make a partition larger than 137 Go, if
it isn't patched to the right Service Pack level. I don't
really think that is your problem - the problem could be
the age of the motherboard being used.

3) If the motherboard was designed before 2003, it is possible
it isn't ready for large disks. If you use a PCI IDE controller
card, you can fix that. Generally, "Ultra133" type cards are
recommended, as Ultra133 is a feature of ATA/ATAPI 7, and was
released after there was 48 bit LBA support for large disks.
So when someone recommends an Ultra133 card, it is with the intention
of getting a recent enough card to also have 48 bit LBA support.
The fact the card supports large disks, may not be documented.
The Ultra133 is a visible marketing term, while 48 bit LBA is
less prominently mentioned.

The ATA/ATAPI spec versions and feature sets are in a table here.
If you get a card with Ultra133 support, that means the card
was made around ATA/ATAPI-7 timeframe. Whereas, the feature you
want, is support for 48 bit LBA, which came in ATA/ATAPI-6.
There are some Ultra100 cards, that with a firmware update,
are ready for large disks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATA/ATAPI

*******
Picture of an Ultra133 TX2.

http://ic.tweakimg.net/ext/i/1011195793.jpg

Examples of the kinds of cards you can find now. This one uses
an ITE8212 IDE chip (something that used to be provided on
some motherboards).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815158081

This card uses a VT6421A, and has one IDE connector and two SATA.
When using a SATA drive with this, you'd insert the Force150 jumper.
For IDE, there should be no special precautions.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815158092
*******

Using an add-in card would require a driver.

As long as you haven't allowed the OS to write to the disk,
the information could still be OK on it. If you've been
"reformatting" or doing other kinds of stuff, it could be
in a real mess.

Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
...
Sydney wrote:

"Paul" a écrit dans le message de groupe de
discussion : ...
Sydney wrote:
No it is not All HDs are with cable select. Thanks anyhow

I assume this is a desktop computer ?

First step, is to enter the BIOS and verify that the BIOS sees
two disk drives. There may be an IDE setup screen, which reports
the detected hard drives and optical drive. If the ASCII text
name of the drive is distorted, then you'd know there was a
communications problem on the cable. The BIOS screen shows the
results of the minimum effort to talk to the drive.

If you're not seeing the disk in the BIOS, there is no point
in working to find it in Windows.

You'd review your cable setup and jumpers, to see if you missed
something. Do both drives have power cables plugged in ? Is
the power connector seated ? Are there any burned pins on the
power connector ? Verify that if there are two drives on the
cable, they're Master:Slave or CS:CS (and that the cable is
80 wire if CS:CS is chosen).

If the drives are both detected in the BIOS, then you can use some
OS to work on them. I use a Linux LiveCD, such as Ubuntu or Knoppix, to
work on Windows disks. Linux can now read NTFS and FAT32, so it is no
problem to work there.

If they're visible in the BIOS, your next stop could be
Disk Management in Windows. If you don't know how to find it,
basically just run diskmgmt.msc . If you see two Disk entries
but no partitions on the second disk, then it could be that
the MBR (Master Boot Sector, that holds the four primary partition
entries) is corrupted.

The "TestDisk" program is an example of a free utility that can
examine a disk and try to reconstruct the MBR. In the process of
doing that, the program will be doing lots of reads on the disk,
so it would give you some idea whether the disk is dying or not,
just based on whether any errors are thrown or not.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

TestDisk isn't likely to be the solution to your problem. I find
about 50% of the time, if I were to accept what it found, it would
mess up the disk. It requires knowledge from the user, as to what it
finds is reasonable or not. For example, if you know the disk had
three partitions (C:, D:, hidden recovery) and it didn't find three
entries, you'd know better than to accept its findings.

In any case, at least work up to the step of using diskmgmt.msc
to prove the disk is detected. If the disk is not there, you have
to work on getting the hardware to access it, before any more progress
can be made.

If a disk has an internal failure, they're designed to not respond
in the event of failure. I disagree with the design philosophy, but
there
it is. For example, some disks "disappear", when a defect table used
in firmware overflows. So in some cases, the disk dying, is not
mechanical or logical, and is a firmware bug. At least some firmware
inspired bugs can easily be fixed by data recovery companies.

In other cases, your own senses can give you an idea what happened to
the drive. I had an old 2GB drive, and one day when I turned on the
computer, I heard a loud "sproing" sound. That was the head assembly
getting snagged in the landing ramp and being torn to shreds. When
you hear a noise like that, you don't need a copy of TestDisk :-(

Paul


"Petrus Tax" a écrit dans le message de
groupe de discussion :
...
Hello:
This may be a more or less mechanical issue: jumper settings? cables
tight? correct cables?
HTH and good luck!
Petrus

"Sydney" wrote in message
...
The PC has 2 hard disks. the boot one was created in november with a
fresh windows home XP . It replaced the old Hitachi disk which was
very slow.
The Hitachi was installed as a slave primary to access the data.
Last week, my daugther asked me to retrieve her personal contacts
which were on the Hitachi. So I had to connect it as primary master
and booted on it. That worked fine.
When returning to the actual boot, the Hitachi disappeared and
Windows sees it as unallocated.
I suppect my USB memory key as the culprit.
Are the data lost ?
What to do know ?
Please help.

Paul, Thanks for this thorough answer and comments. This is a lot of
care.
The Bios sees two disks. Cables setup and jumpers are correct;
Windows disk manager sees a 137 Go not allocated disk (it is 160 Go ) and
starts the init and conversion assistant for the disk.I refused that;
Windows explorer nor disk defrag do not see the disk;
Ubuntu 9.04 (Linux ) sees a 8.2 Go disk with 814 bad sectors. It
realocated 809 sectors.
No change in windows behavior after that.
Should I run TestDisk under Ubuntu since windows does see the disk ?

your advice is highly appreciated

My first concern is, your OS reporting a "137 Go" disk. That means
your WinXP doesn't have enough Service Pack installed.

Imagine the following scenario. You have a 160GB disk. It has a single
partition that uses all the space. Now, connect the disk to an OS that
only supports up to 137GB. The OS attempts a write to a location on
the disk, above the 137GB mark. Instantly, the file system is corrupted,
due to address rollover on the IDE interface.

This document addresses the issue a bit. It says, for Windows XP, you
should
be using Service Pack 1 or higher. If all you have is the original
WinXP Gold release, then you could cause problems for the information
on that disk. If you look in your Control Panels, for the "System" one,
it will tell you the current Service Pack. Mine says "Version 2002
Service Pack 3".

http://web.archive.org/web/200701210...c/tp/137gb.pdf

I would not run any tools on the disk, until I was absolutely sure
the computer you're using can handle a 160GB disk properly.

The Seagate document suggests an UltraATA/133 PCI controller card
as one solution. Another solution would be to use a USB to IDE
disk enclosure for the hard drive. As far as I know, the USB
Mass Storage driver comes in Service Pack 1 or later.

The Ubuntu disc reporting an 8.2GB disk, suggests the motherboard
is reporting a strange CHS value. The motherboard should be
set for LBA, in which case a bogus value of CHS is used to
signal that LBA is in use. I don't think I've ever had a Linux
CD do that here. I have one 10 year old computer, that only supports
up to 137GB in hardware, and don't remember seeing that as a
symptom (8.2GB disks). I'd want to drop down into the BIOS setup screens
and verify whether someone has been messing around with the settings
there.

CHS can only handle storage up to a certain size, and then a
magic CHS value is supposed to indicate to the system that
LBA is to be used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder_Head_Sector

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/doc...isk-HOWTO.html

"Hard drives over 8.4 GB are supposed to report their geometry as
16383/16/63.
This in effect means that the `geometry' is obsolete, and the total
disk size
can no longer be computed from the geometry, but is found in the LBA
capacity
field returned by the IDENTIFY command. Hard drives over 137.4 GB are
supposed
to report an LBA capacity of 0xfffffff = 268435455 sectors
(137438952960 bytes).
Now the actual disk size is found in the new 48-capacity field."

In any case, you're not ready for tools like TestDisk, until
the issues with seeing the disk fully are resolved.

On my oldest computer, I can plug in my Promise Ultra133 TX2
PCI card, as a means to handle large disks (160GB or larger).
Promise has stopped making those, but if you have one in your
junk box, install it and its driver, and give that a try.

To summarize:

1) To handle a 160GB disk, both the hardware and the operating system,
must be able to deal with the large disk. You have received two
indications (137 Go in Windows, 8.2 Go in Linux), that something
is wrong with the reported geometry, as if the hardware isn't
capable of operating with a large drive.

2) Windows will refuse to make a partition larger than 137 Go, if
it isn't patched to the right Service Pack level. I don't
really think that is your problem - the problem could be
the age of the motherboard being used.

3) If the motherboard was designed before 2003, it is possible
it isn't ready for large disks. If you use a PCI IDE controller
card, you can fix that. Generally, "Ultra133" type cards are
recommended, as Ultra133 is a feature of ATA/ATAPI 7, and was
released after there was 48 bit LBA support for large disks.
So when someone recommends an Ultra133 card, it is with the intention
of getting a recent enough card to also have 48 bit LBA support.
The fact the card supports large disks, may not be documented.
The Ultra133 is a visible marketing term, while 48 bit LBA is
less prominently mentioned.

The ATA/ATAPI spec versions and feature sets are in a table here.
If you get a card with Ultra133 support, that means the card
was made around ATA/ATAPI-7 timeframe. Whereas, the feature you
want, is support for 48 bit LBA, which came in ATA/ATAPI-6.
There are some Ultra100 cards, that with a firmware update,
are ready for large disks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATA/ATAPI

*******
Picture of an Ultra133 TX2.

http://ic.tweakimg.net/ext/i/1011195793.jpg

Examples of the kinds of cards you can find now. This one uses
an ITE8212 IDE chip (something that used to be provided on
some motherboards).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815158081

This card uses a VT6421A, and has one IDE connector and two SATA.
When using a SATA drive with this, you'd insert the Force150 jumper.
For IDE, there should be no special precautions.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815158092
*******

Using an add-in card would require a driver.

As long as you haven't allowed the OS to write to the disk,
the information could still be OK on it. If you've been
"reformatting" or doing other kinds of stuff, it could be
in a real mess.

Paul

Nice catch with the '137 G' Paul. That went right by me. It would be nice to
know how old the machine is and just as important if the OS patches have
been applied to SP2. If the patches get applied and the disk still can't be
seen or in its entirety I would then try the diagnostics utility, although
in trying it at anytime I don't quite see a problem as long as one doesn't
ask the utility to do any formating..


--
Jan Alter