Partition on Transferred Drive Not Recognized

[dissembled]

My wife's computer died. I took her SATA HD from her machine and put it into mine. Drive shows up just fine.

Problem is, her drive is 250GB and has a second partition (WinXP). I am also running WinXP but I am not seeing her second partition when I explore her drive.

I have no clue what to do about this and was hoping someone here might be able to help me out.



Thank you

 

[Paperdoc]

Somehow Windows has not "recognized" the second Partition. In fact, this may be as simple as it has failed to assign it a letter name. If that's the case you can fix easily.

You need to use a built-in tool called Disk Management. Click on Start at the bottom left and RIGHT-click on My Computer and choose Manage from the mini-menu. This will open the Computer Management window. Expand its structure in the left pane if necessary and click on Disk Management. The right portion will split into two panes, upper and lower. BOTH can scroll to show you all they have.

The UPPER RIGHT pane shows you all the drives that Windows does understand and can use right now. You should concentrate on the LOWER RIGHT pane which shows you all the hardware devices in the machine that are working, including devices that Windows does not fully understand. In this pane each HDD is represented by a horizontal block with a small label sub-block at its left end showing the disk identifier like "DISK 2", a disk type, a size like "230 GB", and a status. To its right will be one or more sub-blocks (in your case, I expect two) each representing one Partition on the device. In each of these sub-blocks there will be more info specific to the Partition - a Volume Name like "My Disk" or whatever, a letter name like "E:", a Partition size like "120 GB", a File System like "NTFS", and a status. Look closely at the two Partition blocks, particularly at the letter names assigned to each. My guess is that the "missing" second Partition does not have a letter. If that is the case, you can RIGHT-click on that block and choose to assign a letter to it. You will be allowed any letter name not already in use. Choose one, then back out of this and reboot. Windows will update its Registry and you should see that "drive" (Partition, really) in My Computer.

If that is not what you find - for example, if the sub-block is marked with a file System called "RAW" - do NOT Format that "drive" (Partition). A Format will wipe out all it contains. There are ways to recover data from a RAW File System Partition, so post here if you find that and need more help. But I'm hopeful the letter assignment step will solve your problem.

 

[FreeDataRecovery]

Does the drive show up in disk management as a 250GB drive?

If not install XP service pack 3.

Else try the free version of... http://findandmount.com/

 

[Paperdoc]

FreeDataRecovery has an excellent point. I ignored this issue on the basis that this is a SATA drive and all such hardware supports the necessary 48-bit LBA. But I forgot to consider that your OS also MUST have that feature, and it was NOT included in the first version of XP. It was added in SP1. So if you have only the original XP installed, you must update it - to SP3 as FreeDataRecovery recommends.

Until you do that, do NOT try to write anything to this transplanted 250 GB unit. In fact, it would be ultimately safe if you disconnect it now until the update is in place, just to be sure there is not data corruption.

The issue, without being too technical, is that an OS with only the original 28-bit LBA (instead of the newer 48-bit LBA support) MAY write data intended for a late part of the HDD by mistake over top of some data early in the HDD, thus destroying it. So, check which version of XP you have and update it necessary before proceeding.