Hi All, I used to have 2 HDD in my pc, 40gb and 160gb, 160gb had the operating system on it and was formatted to 2 partitions each approx 64gb (drives(d and E), I removed the 40gb as I didnt really need for this system (drive c), I then set the jumpers on the 160gb to master single (i think) when i turned the pc on it said about not a bootable disk, (not usual non system disk, but a diff error) and I can get the old partitions to do anything or get to them, I then put the win xp disk in and reinstalled XP but it would only let me format 32gb on the disk(the remaining space), I need to know how to get the old data back, BIOS shows the disk as a 32gb HDD and so does new xp version, Is there anything I can do to get it back as I need the data on the 2 64gb drives. A friend at work suggested to use partition magic 8 to get the data.
Hey! What brand of drive do you have? Are you sure the jumpers are correct?When you go into disk management do you see more than one partition and what is the size of the drive? You say you reinstalled XP--which drive is it on?
I reinstalled xp on the remaining space on the drive, I only have 1 disk in the computer now and that is a 160gb seagate, i haven't treid disk management yet, will try this when I get home tonight.
Are you sure you put the jumper on "master" and not "limit drive to xGB' Ususally 'master' is the 2 pins closest to the IDE pins CJC
as you look at the back of the HDD the jumper I think is on the far right side, I will check when I get home tonight, with me installing XP again on the spare part of the HDD will this cause me problems, if I get back the other 2 partitions.
CJC thanks for that the hard drive is now being shown at 160GB in BIOS and in computer management about 128gb, Great getting somewhere, I know that the unallocated data in computer management has my old win xp with all my files on, how do I get to this? and get the data back without (hopefully) losing any of it, is this possible. thanks so far for help.
If Disk Management says its 'Unallocated Space' well then i doubt that you will get the data back if there was anything there. So if you actually did that, you formatted the whole hard drive. So basically your data has gone bye bye's. I dont think Partition Magic can retrieve lost data. CJC
The master drive on the primary controller will always be C: This drive will be set 'active'. This drive will be the system partition and contain your boot files (boot.ini, ntldr etc.) When you pulled your 40GB drive, your OS cannot start. (The OS is still there, but Windows boot manager cannot find the OS). Your new C: is now your new 32GB partition, right? The other volumes, now called D: and E:, should still be there, along with your non-bootable Windows installation. If you edit C:\boot.ini and change the partition to point at your previous OS, it should boot once again. Once your old OS is up & running, you can then use the 32GB C: as a stash or whatever... Hopefully it is formatted FAT32 not NTFS. You can never add this 32GB to either volume, because it is now your system partition, containing your boot files. It can be a bit confusing until you consider that the partition containing your system files is your boot partition, LoL Boot files in system partition; system files in boot partition. Got it? I'm not makin' this stuff up... (ask Billy G.) Let us know if you are fixed up, Regards
