Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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Other drives not opening

July 30th, 2014, 6:19

I am running a desktop PC with windows XP along with a 160GB seagate SATA hard disk.
The drives apart from C:/ are not shown in MyComputer recently although C:/ is running properly as my OS is working sound. Previously i had two more drives (namely d:/ and e:/) worth 50GB each.
Since there was some important data there, i wish to retrieve it.
Any suggestions? please help !Image

Re: Other drives not opening

July 30th, 2014, 9:54

Hi, try to use Partition Find and Mount. It is free, and once you find the partition, mount it, copy the data off to a different drive, NOT C: D: or E:

http://findandmount.com/

You may need to save everything off the 160GB, then repartition it. I would not add the D: and E: afterward.

If you are unsure how to do it, I would recommend a friend to help, especially in the data finding and saving stages.

Another option is just get another hard disk, rebuild windows fresh with it, then do data recovery on your disk. A new smallish disk even 500GB should be rather cheap.

This is how I would go about it.

Can help out more if anything is unclear.

Re: Other drives not opening

August 1st, 2014, 11:13

it worked very well. :D :D :D
Now i have transferred every precious data from each drive on cloud servers and every thing is safe.

But still , Is it possible to mount those drives naturally or at boot up?
because they are not directly visible in windows explorer as previously :D :)

Re: Other drives not opening

August 1st, 2014, 11:29

Hi
Really good news :)
If you have backed up all data
Right click on "my computer" and choose manage

Choose disk management and you should see your 160gb hdd there with c taking up a portion
Maybe you can try fixing it there if it looks intuitive enough or post a screenshot and I can step you through it

Basically you should be able to se raw space where the disks were or something but it would help to see it exactly in case there is something I a missing

Re: Other drives not opening

August 1st, 2014, 13:14

pankajwillkillu wrote:Is it possible to mount those drives naturally or at boot up?
because they are not directly visible in windows explorer as previously :D :)

If DMDE can find your lost partitions, then there may be a simple solution:

http://dmde.com/

Can you show us DMDE's Partitions window?

Re: Other drives not opening

August 3rd, 2014, 4:40

I cant make the drive permanently visible
screenshot
Image

Re: Other drives not opening

August 4th, 2014, 1:56

Right click on the other partition which shows 12.32gb and allocate a drive letter.
this will help you see it correctly, as a allocated drive.
i have doubts on the third one.

Re: Other drives not opening

August 4th, 2014, 2:13

if you have all data and don't actually need 2 other drives then just delete them both and make a new volume... then format it. if it doesn't let you, maybe disk is faulty

Re: Other drives not opening

August 4th, 2014, 3:42

AFAICT, the solution to the OP's problem would involve only a handful of mouse clicks in DMDE. AISI, there is no need to shuffle any data back and forth.

The fact that PF&M found all the OP's data would suggest that all 3 volumes are intact and that the damage is probably restricted to the partition table in sector 0. Moreover, the "unknown" partition probably has an incorrect partition ID byte, and this could be the reason why Windows is unable to recognise it. The "unallocated" area probably represents a deleted partition.

Of course I'm only speculating since the OP has so far declined to indulge me ...
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