I have a Hard drive problem that leaves mefrustrated. This whole thing started when I was changing a Hard drive. This drive comes up with an NTLDR missing error, which i think ruins the boot sector. I am trying to use this 'bad' drive as a slave (so I can copy stuff that I cant access). It gets recognized on booting and can be seen in "My computer", but when I double click the drive to view the contents, it shows nothing. In the properties of this drive it tells me that 8.9 gig is used and 10 gig is free. That makes the drive 19 gig, but in reality the drive is 30 gig. It is a Maxtor Diamondmax plus 8. Any suggestions how to retrieve the info from the bad disk? Thanks for your help :confused:

What os are you trying to access this drive from? It sounds like you are trying to access ntfs file system from a 9x operating system. 9x cannot 'see' anything on a drive formatted into ntfs.

There may be other reasons but if you just want it for storage, I'd try a boot floppy and fdisk then format it however you'd like.

Any suggestions how to retrieve the info from the bad disk?
Could give you a number of suggestions but first you must describe your system more comprehensively. Notably:-

Was the problem drive originally in this same computer as a lone master or have you transfered it into this computer as a slave from a different computer?

Which computer/drive is giving you the ntldr missing etc warning - there are many reasons for this message most commonly because boot.ini no longer references the correct windows folder or partition.

A full description of all the partitions and their formats on both HDDs would be invaluable. If you don't know the answers we can direct you to utilities that will dig out the relevant information.

And which OS are you currently booting-to seeing that you have already alluded to a ntldr is missing message; (sorry - FTT already asked that).

PS ... and in changing the hard drive was any attempt made to copy or clone the information on one drive onto the other one?

Thanks guys, The OS that I am now using is XP Pro. I believe the 'bad' drive in question amy have been an NTFS drive and was used on XP Home. Yes I am using the same computer,an AMD xp1800 to retreive the info. The 'bad' drive was used as a single drive and did not have any partitions on it. I am now trying to use it as a slave drive (with another HD as master)after changing the jumper settings. The new drive which I formatted as Fat32 is used as the master. Could it be that since the master is Fat32 and slave is NTFS, the second drive is not accessible? If so what recourse can I take?
Thanks

If you are using WinXP (whether installed on FAT32 or NTFS) then there should be no problem with it "seeing" NTFS partitions elsewhere.

What is strange is that the OS actually sees the partition but sees no files/folders on the 8.9 gig of used space on the partition - and which has presumably been given a drive letter so that it appears in My Computer at all.

Ensure that "Show hidden files and folders" is selected and that "Hide protected operating system files" is unselected from the {tools -- options} menu of My Computer.

If you RClick on the drive letter in MyComputer and choose properties you could try error checking from the Tools Tab.

Also RClick My Computer and choose Manage and then see if the drive is recognised normally in the right hand panel.

If still seeing the drive but nothing on it you could try downloading that hdd's diagnostic utility and using it from a floppy to double check on the disk's integrity.

If by this time you have still not been able to directly see your files then download GetDataBack for NTFS from www.runtime.org and scan the drive to see what files are recoverable or not. You then have the choice of recovering them for free one by one or paying and being able to retrieve them in batches.

When you have got all your stuff back you could zero the drive with the same HDD utility on a floppy and then repartition and reformat the drive - but only do this if the disk came up as error free.

The 'bad' drive was used as a single drive and did not have any partitions on it.
It could not have functioned without at least one partition on it.

Thanks Paul, I shall try all the stuff you have taken the time to show me. I am confident that with this advice it will work. :)

Tried Formating a 1.5GB Hard Disk and it got a BAD SECTOR

I was trying to upgrade from Windows98 SE to Windows ME and as the system was still surveying the hardware and system settings i got a message "set up cannot continue. Try formatting Your Drive". I did as asked and in the process, the hard disk developed a bad sector. So i was forced to repartition the drive hoping that this will remove all traces of data on the drive and create a new partion. This did not solve the problem which i realised when i was formatting it as when it reached the bad sector the system hanged so i was again forced to repartition and only set ahalf of the 1.5GB disk space for the installation of the Operating System. What ca i do to remove the bad sector.
My Hard Disk is provided by Seagate and i have a Dell Desktop Computer.

Soo much worried!!!!!!!

elasurj:

Please start your own thread for your question, rather than jumping into this one. That way the people attempting to help will be able to concentrate on your question alone.

I have lost my d and e drives
these are the cd rom drives
how do i get the back.

Viquar - please start your own thread and dont piggyback someone elses.

Click on HERE (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=17) and include as many details about your system, the operating system, the hardware and a history of how all this started.