bit off topic, need help with my computer

  • Thread starter Thread starter minofifa
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minofifa

minofifa

New member
Hey everybody, i really appreciate the help as i am in a serious jam.

i bought this software to partition and instal different os's onto my computer (one setup for recording and another for general use). after installing it, it has cause my hard drives to dissappear other than the main hard drive (drive C).

it is wierd, normally i have an 80 gig hard drive, partitioned in half so it is 40 (C) and 40 gig (F). I also have two 120 gig drives (G) and (H). Now only the C shows up (even the other half of that drive, F, is missing).

I have checked my device manager and all of the drives are there under hard disk drives and they all say that there is no problem and they are all enabled. I have also inserted my motherboard CD and it doesn't seem like i am missing any drivers. These drives have been working fine for a long time, now they have just dissappered....

I'm totally stumped, i have tried restarted my computer and restoring it to an earlier date....nothing. Any advice or ideas? i'm really in a jam. i have posted at anandtech.com but no help from there. here are my system specs:

1024mg panasonic RAM
Athlond 64 3200+
Asus K8N e deluxe motherboard.
Radeon 9800 SE
no soundcard installed
2 x 120 gig western digital hard drives (NOT SHOWING UP)
1 x 80 gig western digital (1/2 showing up because it is partitioned in half)

thanks for any help you can offer
 
Hmm,
Do the drives show up in the partitioning software?
Maybe those partitions just need to be initialized. :confused:

If you are on XP you could go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management.
If the drives/partitions are all listed in the Disk Manager ..... right click on each drive and select Initialize.
You can find information in the Help files for Disk Management.

HTH
 
minofifa. was the 64 working fine with the two drives
BEFORE you used the partition software ?
why 2 OS's ? if your trying to run linux and windows tell us...
 
thanks crankz, i will give that a try when i get home. yes manning1 every drive was working wonderfully untill installed this stupid software. what happened was installed the software hoping to actually use it a few days later but it went right into the program, asking me to create backup disks of this and that. i didn't have a floopy drive at the time so i exited out of the software. when i restarted my computer the drives dissappeared. I uninstalled the paritition software and did a system restore and still nothing.

like i said, i will try what was suggested. one thing though, one of those drives had a lot of stuff on it, will initializing it delete those files?
 
and no haha i was not defecting to linux. i planned on setting up to versions of windows, one with all the shitty software and drivers i need for school and the internet and stuff. the other version was gonna be strpeed down to sfocus on recording.

hey crankz, is "initialize" the same thing as "mae partition active"? i don't seem to have that initialize option on my lap tops menu, maybe my home computer will be different, i'll check and let you know
 
oh my god minofifa. i hope you havent already lost any of your files.
it was asking you to create back-ups BECAUSE of partition creation.
DONT DO ANYTHING. visit a pc tech and see if somehow he can
restore your system. i dont frankly use partitioning software.
foldering does the same thing for me. also with drives being so cheap ...
i dont bother.
i sincerely hope you get up and running. all the best and peace.
 
why would they just dissapear though? Anyways, i've had a look at my disk manager as was suggested and it looks something like this

drive C = system
drive __ = unkown partition
drive __ = unkown partition
drive __ = unknown partition

thsoe blanks should read F,G and H. but they aren't there, there is just the little icon of a hard drive but no letter. only the C letter is there.

HOw could it have reformatted 2 120 gig drives and half an 80 gig drive so fast? it never did any long task and the drives still worked after i canceled the program. they only dissapeared after i had restarted.
 
ok i have good news and really shitty news. I found out how to get my drives back. if i delete the old partition (because windows says that it was not created for windows) and then create a new one, everything seems to work fine. The shitty news is that i have to reformat the drive thus causing me to loose whatever was on that hard drive. Before i go ahead and cut my losses and reformat every drive, is there any way to extract that data off? i wouldn't be that upset as i have a backup of most of that stuff, there are just some pictures and stuff that would be lost that are important.

Thanks for the help guys.
 
minofifa. you ONLY need ONE version of windows for what your trying to do !!
heres the tip. WITHOUT partitioning or ANYTHING.
just set up in windows TWO windows user profiles.
one for recording , and one for your personal and internet stuff.
i dont even do that. i just have a folder market personal stuff with sub folders. then i have another folder - not on the drive containing
windows (but a second drive) called song projects. and in song projects ...
i have a folder for each song i'm working on.
i dont understand why you thought you needed 2 windows OS's to do this.

if you didnt actually partition and format, and it was all over in a flash
then probably your files are still on disk. i would visit a pc tech if i were you.
peace.
 
Call me nutty, but why would you need to install software to install an OS and partition drives?
 
Sounds like the partitioning software corrupted/removed the file structure of the other drives/partitions.
About the only way I can think to retrieve the data would be with the aid of a data recovery service. That could be rather expensive.
You could search around for repairing file structure and see if that turns up any clues.
 
manning,
There are many benefits of running a dual boot system over using alternate login accounts.
Being the computer engineer that you are, I would assume that you would be well aware of all those benefits.

-Edit to add-
The next best thing to dual boot would be alternate hardware profiles.
 
ya thanks for the help gents, i have decided to cut my losses and reformat all the drives. had i done this in the beginning when i got my computer, i would not have run into these problems so once i get up and running i will be much happier.

as far as the software i'm using, it is called system commander 8, check it out at www.v-com.com

and as far as having two boot systems over using one OS and multiple user accounts, i would still have driver conflicts and hardware conflicts with all the crap i have. If i ever get this up and running i will post and let you know how it turns out.
 
Hello minofifa I have to agree with manning1 and why do you feel you need to partition 3 drives for?

Take your 2 - 120GB drives and use 1 for samples and teh other projects and then use the 80GB for your OS, and programs! I dont know why you see a need to partition all your drives.

Hope this helps.
 
woooo!!! fixed it!!!!
thanks again for everybody's help. Apparently the problem was that the software blocks all other primary partitions NTFS format so there is no conflict between os's. it does this by default so i had to change some settings... long story short, all my stuff is safe! I'm gonna back up my shit more thuroughly and then try to get this multiboot system going, i think it has potential.

Thanks again,

PS: i got more help on computer tech here than i do at anandtech.com, homerecording has awsome members.
 
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