New HHD can't be seen by Windows XP

marco79

marco79

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I bought a new 500Gb SATA HHD and had some data put on it over the holidays. My Device Manager detects the HHD but it isn't NTFS partitioned so Windows XP can't read anything on it.

The data was put on it by 2 PC's running Windows 7. Is there anyway I can view the data on my PC which is running XP, or a way of changing the HHD to NTFS without loosing any data?
 
Win 7 is still using NTFS, so you should be able to access the data.

Three things that can be done:
1. Check disk with a Win 7 PC
2. Use recovery software to check/analyse the disk.
3. Boot with Linux disk and see if you can access the drive.
 
Neverwhere said:
What file system is it currently in?
Click to expand...

I don't know. How do I check this? There is no Drive letter (D:/) when its connected. It says protected partition in the device manager.

I don't know anyone with a windows 7 pc here in Port Edward. Where can I get recovery software & what is Linux?
 
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Don't know how Win7 works, but with XP, if you right click on My Computer-->Manage--->Storage-->Disk Management. Can you see the drive there?
You might just need to format and create a partition
 
I can see the HDD in disk management but all the options are blanked out. It says protected partition.

I have XP service pack II.

I think one of my cousins screwed up when trying to partition the HDD.
 
Maybe formatted with a special tool?

Was the Drive formatted before data put on...
Had a problem where a Media Player didn't show the HDD and it wasn't formatted ... Brand New Drive ...
 
Go and enable it in the Disk Management Console which can be found at START->Settings->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Storage->Disk Management

On second though start googling GPT Protected Partition, does not look like XP supports it. Hopefully I'm wrong.
 
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If it's a GPT Protected Partition (used on 64-bit operating systems), try and install VMWare with a 64-bit version of Windows Vista or 7 O/S image, then access the drive, copy all the files to another drive, format it as NTFS and copy the files back...

Also try the latest Acronis Disk Director and see if it picks it up - you will need to use the recovery boot disk that you create when installing the program. Boot the PC using the CD/FlashDisk you created (not your normal XP installation) then try and see if it's recognised - True Image should then be able to re-size the partition without any data loss. Then create a new NTFS partition and install Vista or Win 7, boot from this installation and copy all the data to this new NTFS partition. Boot back into your XP installation and remove the Vista Win 7 files, then delete the GPT partition once you are sure you can access all the files you copied...

Otherwise, if you have say an 80GB spare HDD, load a copy of Win7/Vista 64-bit on it and boot from that to see the files and move them.
 
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