My Hard Drive is not being recognized in Vista Disk Management

I would examine the MBR and partition table, plus the first boot sector (sector 63) with a hex editor.

HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor:
http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

Launch HxD. Select Extras -> Open disk -> Select your physical disk. You should now see Sector 0.

To backup track 0 plus the boot sector, you need to select Edit -> Select Block. Select the hex radio button and then set Start Offset = 0, and Length = 8000. This should highlight the contents of the first 64 sectors. Now select File -> Export -> Editor view. Upload the saved text file.

I downloaded the program.

There is no boot sector.



There is a message at sector 0 that says "Invalid partition table. Error loading operating system. Missing operating system."

Other than that message, there is nothing on the drive until sector 2047.

I do not have enough space on my hard drive to transfer the entire contents.

Is there a way to selectively transfer the files of 152 Gigabytes? - OR - Restore the drive to a slave or a way to convince the Disk Management that it is a NTFS?

I know the problem is being caused by the Logical Disk Manager Administrative service and possibly the logical Disk Manager Service not being started or the services might be disabled. To solve the problem, click on the "Start" menu, click the "Run" command, and type in: services.msc , scroll down until you see both these services. Right click on each of the services about and select properties, on the general tab, change the startup type to "automatic" and click the start button under the service status. Do this for both of the services, and it will fix the problem.

In Vista, it is called the Windows Management Instrumentation and the WMI Performance Adapter. I did as you said in services and they are set to automatic.

This is what controls the Disk Management in Vista as far as I know of.

I get to disk management by right clicking on computer and then left clicking on Manage. This opens up a program called computer management.

In the computer management program is a sub-program called disk management.

This is still not recognizing the NTFS although I did find out on the disk where it first introduces that the disk is using an NTFS file system.

Maybe if there was a way to delete everything before that, the Disk Manager might recognize it. I just can't get the Hex Editor to allow me to delete. The buttons are all grayed out.

I'm not familiar with Win 7, but it may be that your drive is aligned for 4KB sectoring, even though it has 512-byte sectors. Earlier Windows versions use sector 63 for the first boot sector. This is the first sector of the second logical track (63 logical sectors per logical track).

I'm guessing that sector 2048 is the boot sector of the first partition. If so, then it should contain an "NTFS" text string.

Can you upload sectors 0 and 2048?

The OP states that the file system is "raw". This means that parts of the file system are damaged. The first things to check are the MBR, partition table, and boot sector(s). If these are intact, then the problem is most likely a corrupted MFT.

Use Easeus Data Recovery, it will scan your HDD and rebuild your NTFS (or FAT or whatever partition table you had) to the best of its power, you should be able to recover 100% of your data if you didnt do any read/write since the break.

I wish I had. I stupidly erased my main HDD sector 0 with that Hex Edit Program.

Now I have purchased a new HDD and just finished loading all the programs back into it.

I now have the problem with both HDDs.

I need to find a way to safely convert the raw files I can see on the Hex Editor to NTFS files to place on my new HDD.

Know of any workable solutions?

I originally Slaved the old IDE drive to the DVD and placed the proper jumpers on it where it said SLAVE on the circuit board.

The newly formatted HDD I just purchased and the one I deleted sector 0 on, are both SATA drives.

Yes, that is true, but how do I solve the problem.

When hard disk partition are not detected in disk managment, it is the mbr that was probably damaged and some virus does like to do the damage.

Last time when my maxtor external disk not detected there, i restored it by some recovery tool with its partition recovery module see you can find it here http://www.icare-recovery.com

Sometimes when disk got problems, it reports raw file system or raw drive and you wont be able to access files. some recovery tool can also do the recovery for you. Remember download trial to see whether it can get your files before purchase.

Best answer selected by JeffTHobby.

What ended up happening:

I started using the Hex editor to look at the information on the drive.

Since I didn't know how to read Hexadecimal code, I thought the best idea would be to delete Sector 0 on the hard drive and start over.

This is a really bad idea. I also didn't realize that the Hexadecimal tool would recognize my drives differently than windows did, so I deleted sector 0 on my C: drive thinking it was my slaved drive.

I had to purchase a new hard drive and reinstall every program on my entire computer, it took weeks.

I then used Mini-Tool Power Data Recovery, a free recovery tool, to recover my files on my hard drives and place the recovered files on the new drive. I then used Windows Disk Management, after watching some you-tube videos on how to use it, to reformat and re-partition my hard drives.

I just finished that process.

I did learn that the Hex-Editor is really good for finding and copying a backup of sector 0, but I had to go through an entire learning experience to find that out and by that time I had already tried so many things I had changed my Hard Drive too much to simply go back.

SATA Drives usually store in 512k lines and 1 line on sector 0 and then the next line is usually at like 2027 or something like that. The size of your boot sector and the size of your available sectors can be found with the mini tool partition magic tool. Your sector 0 backup is usually found by adding the number of sectors in the partition with the number of sectors in the boot sector and subtracting 1. You can still find many more sectors with your Hex Editor, so the backup of sector 0 is found at the end of recognized drive found with the mini tool partition magic wizard.

I found that it is best to work with Windows Disk Management when trying to change partitions while running Windows Vista.

Writing anything to a drive that has problems will only create more problems, unless you know what you are doing. HxD is a great tool for examining your drive before you blindly let all manner of data recovery tools loose on your data. In fact it is these data recovery tools that sometimes create problems for you. HxD starts up in readonly mode, so you can't do any damage if you leave it that way.

As for deleting sector 0, that is very easily fixed using freeware such as TestDisk or Partition Find and Mount. In fact, I usually do it by hand, using HxD, rather than allowing utilities such as Microsoft's FIXMBR to do it. Moreover, there are several threads on various storage forums where I have had to help a user recover from data loss after FIXMBR trashed the file system.

In short, if you're looking for a single-click solution, then perhaps you would be better off having someone else investigate your problem. As the saying goes, it is a bad workman who blames his tools. ;-)

i did what you say and exported the file
then what i have to do with it ?
thanks