I just purchased a sata HD and hooked it together with my old IDE HD. Things went well at first. I transfered all my personal files in the sata HD and reformated my old IDE HD. Installed a fresh Windows XP Home Edition in my old drive. But then a BIG PROBLEM came... Windows cant recognize my sata HD. It says in the disk manager that the drive is foreign and have to be reformated. How can I go around on this? I'll be losing all my files if this can't be fixed. Thanks in advance.
Hard Drive problem ... (IDE and SATA)
- Thread starter aflimmd
- Start date
There are data recovery freeware tools available as well as using a live for cd Linux distro. Knoppix is one of the easier distros often advised. Knoppix can easily read off of MS drives as well as those with Linux running on them. It will be tested when Vista comes out for sure. http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Main_Page
One of the first places to go for free to try data recovery products namely sharewares is at http://www.snapfiles.com/Shareware/system/swdatarecovery.html
Easy Recovery Lite is another tool available at http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoverylite/
Datarecovery has a trial version at http://www.recoverdata.in/recovery-data/windows-data-recovery-tools.html
One of the first places to go for free to try data recovery products namely sharewares is at http://www.snapfiles.com/Shareware/system/swdatarecovery.html
Easy Recovery Lite is another tool available at http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoverylite/
Datarecovery has a trial version at http://www.recoverdata.in/recovery-data/windows-data-recovery-tools.html
Most of the recovery tools will operate indepently from Windows like being loaded from a floppy for the older ones and a cd for the newer tools available. With the live for cd version of Knoppix, ubuntu, Gentoo, or others the drives detected will appear as desktop icons. You simply double click on each one to open separate windows. Knoppix will access just about every type of partition except any newer Linux versions.
Once you have everything recovered you should be able to use the disk management tool to reformat the drive. But you want to find out how to make the partition active again if possible before doing that. Have you reinstalled the sata drivers since the reinstallation of Windows?
Once you have everything recovered you should be able to use the disk management tool to reformat the drive. But you want to find out how to make the partition active again if possible before doing that. Have you reinstalled the sata drivers since the reinstallation of Windows?
Thank you for the replies.
I'll try on the recovery tools you guys mentioned. Thanks. Yes I already did install the sata drivers. Windows can recognize the drive but reads it as unformatted. It also indicates in the disk management tool that the drive can be converted to basic disk. What does this mean?
I'll try on the recovery tools you guys mentioned. Thanks. Yes I already did install the sata drivers. Windows can recognize the drive but reads it as unformatted. It also indicates in the disk management tool that the drive can be converted to basic disk. What does this mean?
You have to format any partition before it can be accessed for anything. The problem is that the original installation of Windows made a log of the Sata drive when it was first installed. Often when Windows is reinstalled a Sata drive can be seen under a different drive letter then it had been.