PC Peripherals Need help with hdd/windows install

N

NinByChoice

Skilled
Hi peeps,
Was installing windows xp in my 80GB hdd today because i had shifted rigs from the one in sig to AMD2600+, via chipset. Well it prompted me with a "not enough space to install on the selected partition" during install and quit. My C drives was just 3GB and there were some big files on it, so i wasnt surprised. I just fixed in my other comp to transfer the files and free up some space and was surprised that it wasnt being read. It was recognised in the bios and device manager in windows but no drives would show up in explorer.

Now i tried to start a fresh install of windows and the install wont recognise even the partitions on the drive. Every options says "cannot access the specified drive". Helpful Sunny gave some ideas - tried the fixmbr, fdisk/mbr commands from recovery console and the win98 boot disk. Those didnt work too.

I have a lot of data in the drive and cant afford to lose it. Any ideas before i do a low level format?

Raghu.
 
Did you run fdisk /mbr from the Win98 boot disk ? This version of fdisk has a bug in it which makes it erase a section of the mbr which is normally not touched by other fdisk versions. I have successfully used this version of fdisk often when Windows XP does not boot on any system.
 
Yes i did run fdisk /mbr from the win98 cd - first edition though. Sunny had suggested it too! The problem is that none of the partitions are displayed or even recognised by windows setup and fdisk. Im totally lost :(

Raghu.
 
i dont think that fdisk will show up ntfs partitions.

did u try attaching the hdd to another pc which already has windows installed?
 
fdisk does show ntfs partitions. There is no OS on the drive causing problems, the other drive has WinXP. I have managed to format it using maxtor's low level utility. Now to recover the data...Any suggestions on what proggie to use - Im thinking of GetdataBack. Btw, there are many compressed folders, I wonder how the programs will work with those files/folders..

Raghu.
 
Raghunandan said:
I have managed to format it using maxtor's low level utility. Now to recover the data...Any suggestions on what proggie to use -
Raghu.
Click to expand...

You formatted the drive from which you want to recover your data???:S

I dont think its possible to recover ur data now but you can try EasyRecoveryâ„¢ Professional from ontrack.com
 
HAcker, its possible to recover data from drives that have been formatted. Im using easy recovery and getdataback (and have used them before). All of them seem to find CRC errors in the boot sector. Leads me to believe there are bad sectors on the hard disk. Also windows says its not able to format the drive - reaffirming the fact that there is something wrong with the boot sector.

More diagnostics today with help from people here otherwise the drive goes to a recovery center soon.

Raghu.
 
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