asked on Disk Access Issue
I am running Win 7 and can not access my drives without initializing and formating. IS there a way not to format and lose all data?
Windows XPMicrosoft Applications
Last Comment
ferranti02
First power down your machine and reseat and look at your conectors to make sure they are connected properly you may have a slightly loose connector.
r you may have a bad drive controller. Put your drive in another machine or USB connector to extract data.
r you may have a bad drive controller. Put your drive in another machine or USB connector to extract data.
ASKER
It's not a hardware problem. I had to reinstall windows and now it won't recognize the drives without formating them which I don't want to do.
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William Peck
What drives are nog recognized? You say you reinstalled windows, on a primary drive, C partition I presume. Do you have other physical drives that are not recognized or do you have additional partions on your primary drive that are not recognized? Please clarify, I feel we do not understand your issue fully yet. Thanks.
ASKER
I have three drives C: D; for Data and a USB back up drive. When I reinstalled windows with Raid 1 it won't recognize the d: or back up drivs and they show up as "raw" not NTFS or FAT.
I can not access them, it wants me to format.
I can not access them, it wants me to format.
Ok, so you have 2 internal hard drives (called C and D), you are now talking about a RAID 1 configuration? Please provide more details on what you did because adding important info like an existing RAID setup afterwards does not help us solving your issue.
- Did you have the RAID setup prior to the reinstall of Windows?
- How is your RAID setup (hardware), is it just RAID 1 (mirror) and not RAID 0?
- On what harddrive, partition, driveletter did you reinstall Windows?
- Did you have Windows setup format and driveletter/partition?
- Can you still access data on your external USB drive?
Please add more detail as I'm beginning to think that your RAID setup could be the cause of your problem.
- Did you have the RAID setup prior to the reinstall of Windows?
- How is your RAID setup (hardware), is it just RAID 1 (mirror) and not RAID 0?
- On what harddrive, partition, driveletter did you reinstall Windows?
- Did you have Windows setup format and driveletter/partition?
- Can you still access data on your external USB drive?
Please add more detail as I'm beginning to think that your RAID setup could be the cause of your problem.
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I ended up using runtime.org and it worked.
tx for feedback - may i assume the free ones did not work ?
ASKER
Correct, The ones that worked had a try out but only for a limited amount of data could be recovered, so I had to buy the full version.
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Walt Forbes
- Boot from a recue CD and copy your important data to an external (USB) device
- Disconnect your internal harddrive and connect it to another PC in an external casing
What is exactly your issue with your W7 system, how many drives do you have, what is the configuration etc?