• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Hard Drive issue

Imnukingfutz

DP Veteran
Joined
Dec 3, 2011
Messages
1,154
Reaction score
432
Location
Kingdom of Nigh
Gender
Undisclosed
Political Leaning
Libertarian
OK, I am no computer expert but I know a little more than enough to be dangerous to my own computer...lol

I wiped clean my hard drives and reinstalled windows onto my WD HD. I have a secondary Seagate HD also installed into my computer. Both are 1TB.

I use the Seagate to store my music, videos, pictures etc...but since my re-install I can not access the Seagate. It shows it in the Device Manager and says it is working properly but it does not show as available in my "computer" option...it shows the WD & the DVD RW drive.

How can I solve this? I want to get my stuff back.
 
Do a google search for Hiren's boot CD. Burn that to a CD or USB drive. Then use one of the MBR tools (MBRTool or MBRfix) and attempt a repair on that drive.
It is all freeware and perfectly legal.

If that doesn't work, under Hiren's XP system you should be able to copy the pics etc.. to your other drive.
 
Do a google search for Hiren's boot CD. Burn that to a CD or USB drive. Then use one of the MBR tools (MBRTool or MBRfix) and attempt a repair on that drive.
It is all freeware and perfectly legal.

If that doesn't work, under Hiren's XP system you should be able to copy the pics etc.. to your other drive.

Im not trying to copy the drive, I want my computer to allow me access to it.

The Hardware Device Manager recognizes it being there but I can not get to it...its like the drive is not mapped....and I dont know how to do that with Windows 7.
 
Im not trying to copy the drive, I want my computer to allow me access to it.

The Hardware Device Manager recognizes it being there but I can not get to it...its like the drive is not mapped....and I dont know how to do that with Windows 7.
Your computer can only access part of the MBR (master boot record) - what the HD is saying it is. It cannot seem to access where the data starts (partitions) which is also defined in the MBR. I was recommending you repair to get Windows to access it again.

The only way you are going to get Windows to know more is to "Format" the drive with right click in your device manager. I do not recommend if you want to keep the data.
 
Your computer can only access part of the MBR (master boot record) - what the HD is saying it is. It cannot seem to access where the data starts (partitions) which is also defined in the MBR. I was recommending you repair to get Windows to access it again.

The only way you are going to get Windows to know more is to "Format" the drive with right click in your device manager. I do not recommend if you want to keep the data.

So if I reformat it, I can see it again and access it?

I have the drive backed up so I wont loose anything I dont already have. Thank you!
 
So if I reformat it, I can see it again and access it?

I have the drive backed up so I wont loose anything I dont already have. Thank you!

No, this may not fix it. Try this:

Control Panel > Administrative tools> Computer management, then go to disk management, your second disk should be here, you can then give it a Drive letter and it will show up in my computer.
 
No, this may not fix it. Try this:

Control Panel > Administrative tools> Computer management, then go to disk management, your second disk should be here, you can then give it a Drive letter and it will show up in my computer.

OK, this is the first time my computer is acknowledging (besides in Device Hardware Manager) that there is a 2nd HD....now, how do I allocate a drive letter to this?

All I can see is;
Convert to dynamic disk...
convert to GPT disk.
 
Last edited:
RedAkston is on the right path...but there might be more to the situation.

Check out the following link: Why does Windows 7 not recognize my new hard drive?

This gives Red's solution, other solutions and some things to consider. Bottom line, this is not a tough problem to deal with.
 
Back
Top Bottom