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"missing hard drive"

i recently picked up a virus which made it impossible to open any icons on my desktop. this made it neccessary to format my hard drive C. I have two hard drives C & D. After the format and reinstallation of the OS (Win 98), i no longer have the D drive in My Computer. when i boot up both drives are recognized but the D drive is not there when i open My Computer. i moved a lot of music and other files to the D drive before the format. how can i get them back?
Avatar of RanjeetRain
RanjeetRain

Did you accidently remove the drive????

I hope you have not. Do the foloowing checks. Run FDISK from Comamd prompt. Let us know if you get to see both C and D drive over there.

If you see it there, we can get it back. Else, possibly you will have to forget them.
Let me explain.

A physical Hard disk can have a maximum of 4 primary partitions. Windows 98 does not support multiple primary partitions on the same physical drive. So, you need to create secondary partions, if you want to have more than one logical drives on the same physical drive.

What might have happened is that, earlier your system had a primary partition (C drive) and a secondary partition (D drive). When you were doing the formatting, if you also used FDISK then there is one chance you removed your secondary partition (D drive).

But if you have not used any partitioning tools/utilities, you can get your data back. If this is the case, it mean, possibly your PC was using some sort of Disk Manager (disk management program). Many PCs come pre configured from the OEM with such configuration, such as IBM.

Try that FDISK test. If you see a primary as well as a secondary partition, don't lose hope.
Avatar of isenberg

ASKER

No, sorry, i forgot to explain. i have two hard drives, one C drive of 80 GB and another smaller D drive of 8.4 GB. The C drive is the primary (master) and the D drive is the slave. does that help?
Does your BIOS detect your smaller drive still?
yes the BIOS is set for autodetect and both hard drives are detected at boot. i just can't see the D drive in My Computer. it's late here. what time do you have locally?
Problem seems to be there with your installed HDD controllers. Somhow during setup, system couldn't detect your second HDD and hence it has not installed appropriate controleers for it.

I will reccomend you to remove all HDD controlers from your system and restart it. You will need setup CD/locally available installable files. But if everything goes well, your system will have all the necessary HDD controllers.

Its mid day here.
how do i remove HDD controllers? from system? it is 1:30 am here
Open System properties. Right click the my compuetr Icon on the desktop and click properties. Go to list of hardware devices. Expand the HDD controllers. You can find all the installed HDD controllers (and other system drivers too). Be careful to not remove something extra. That would be inviting more troubles.

Remove and restart computer. I reccomend do a physical power swithch off. Power the computer on again. When starting window next time, the system will install the necessary controllers automatically. You will either need the setup CD or must have the installation files available locally on the HDD.

The system may restart itslef many times. I predict 2-4 times. Let it. Its normaal.

Its not dificult to do. Should take less than 10 minutes. But you may try it tomorrow if you are uncomfortable. I may or may not be around later.
>Windows 98 does not support multiple primary partitions on the same physical drive

bug swat > Windows 98 does supports multiple primary partitions on the same physical drive as long as the last logical partition is  FAT
i went into Device Manager and deleted Hard Disk Drive controller. I powered off then on again. Hardware installer recognized both the primary and secondary hard drives. But the D Drive is not present in My Computer. Note to chicagoan: The C drive is not partitioned; it is a 80GB drive. The D Drive is another physical 8.4GB hard drive. The BIOS is recognizing both drives. in case it may make any difference, there are also 2 CD drives. Right now the primary CD drive is using the name of Drive D.
My comment was to RanjeetRain re: 98 and partitioning.

At this point I'd start working my way through these:
 
(courtesy of CrazyOne)

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Hard Drive Mechanic
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Active UNERASER
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Well try this.

Edit your config.sys file. May be you also need to edit Config.dos Add this line to your file

LASTDRIVE=H

And let me know how it goes?
chicagoan, you are bombarding the questioner with irrelevant information. And in the process creating unnesessary confusion.

You have not even understood the problem, how possibly u can offer a solution? All the links u have given are for restoring FILES/FOLDERS/FILE SYSTEMs. Questioner's problem is that he has got his drive missing. READ READ READ. You need to read the question better.
I understand his HD is detected by the bios.
I understand his HD partition is not detected by Windows 98
I understand it was working properly and  his files are on the media.

FYI: LASTDRIVE=Z is executed by windows 98 io.sys by default
That still doesn't help bring drive into the sight!

Sometimes what should work doesn't work. So you need to make double sure.

Also, what do you think about the possiblity of requirement some sort of disk manager program? Just in case the affected HDD requires one? Possible?
hmmm...

firstable, may i know what was your OS before you formatted your HDD?
and what is your OS right now?
there is a chance if your OS was something like NT or 2000 or sort of, they might use NTFS for your D drive
instead of FAT so it is likely that your OS now is unable to detect those kind of partitions. :>
note to blazher
Originally Win 98, re-installed Win 98 from clean install.
Still missing the 2nd hard drive. Is there any other way to see the drive other than thru My Computer?
I am sure it won't happen, but have you tried booting to command prompt. See what happens.

Also, just for a while, remove your CD-ROMs and then see if you get your drive back.
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You never told us what does FDISK show you. As I said in the very beginning, if your FDISK doesn't recognize your D drive, forget it.
FDISK must recognize the drive. If it does, you have the drive, teh problem is with the file system, which has been damaged. If it recognizes and shows the existence of some sort of file system (recognized/non-recognized/damaged) on it, try using any of the suggested tools to recover your file system/data.
i ran fdisk and the D drive was recognized. I now find the D drive icon in My Computer but it won't let me open it. There is some progress at last! Now what?
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I have an almost identical problem with XP Pro.  After a brown-out destroyed an already staggering Windows in one machine, I extracted the hard drives and installed them, one at a time, in a machine in good operating condition.  C was recognized and the data was intact.  D showed as non-formatted, and it had been operating perfectly, so I assume I can reformat and salvage the data with an undelete program.  However, E shows up as recognized new hardware in the SysTray; shows up in Device Manager as "working properly," and doesn't show in My Computer at all.  I've tried deleting the controller in DM and restarting - doesn't help...