cant see files on hard drive...but they are there!!

[mrfloppy]

I have had to reinstall windows xp on my comp due to increasingly long boot up time. All the data from the D: drive seems to have disappeared. I can see the D: drive and open it there are no files on it!! If I click on properties it shows that indeed 21 gig is being used (thats about how much info i had on it) I cannot access any of it.
What i did.
Erased disk c:
tried to install xp home - failed to complete it
unplugged all usb stuff, disconnected d drive
installed xp pro sp2
Installed Ali Intergrated driver (needed to recognise larger (160Gb) hard drive on asus a277a mobo)
re connected d drive
d drive now found but nothing on it (apparently!)
XP is still booting very slowly (10 mins ish)

any help would be appreciated...do i need to rebuild some sort TOC for the drive?...is that possible

many thanks

 

[PCcashCow]

How does you disk appear under Disk MGT? It it Dynamic or basic & is the full drive viewable? Also, under a Dos prompt and you access and view the directory list?

 

[mrfloppy]

Disk manager says its
basic, healthy and online. it is only showing as 149.05 Gb although it is a 160Gb drive.

Under Dos only 2 files are showing with the dir command
autoexec.bat and config.sys

although under dos it does show as having 159.96 Gb free

I have run chkdsk to no avail.
Does this provide any clues??

thanks
MB

 

[Rovemelt]

Sounds like a filesystem problem. Either a corrupted filesystem or the wrong filesystem. But I can't think of how you would have the wrong filesystem, so that's not likely. Damaged filesystem or FAT corruption/problem is my guess.

Some viruses can do this.

 

[niz]

open "my computer"
right click on d drive icon
go to properties
open tools tab
click "error checking"
check "automatically fix file system errors"
click start button in dialog box

 

[harty23690]

Disk manager says its
basic, healthy and online. it is only showing as 149.05 Gb although it is a 160Gb drive.

On XP all drives have less formatted capacity that the actual drive says it does.

My 120GB drive shows up in XP as having a capacity of 115GB. So thats not an issue.

With regards to your other problems, sounds like you could have issues with IDE controllers, i.e. your mobo.
How old is the system? Either that or the drive is packing up.