HDD Problems!

[Raffaz]

OK so you can see it in the Device Mang. When you right click on the drive do you get the option to Make partition Active? Now you should be able to make the computer force the drive into working. But it might want to change the format of the drive over to NTFS. But you should get the option to format or not.......


TIP: Many people these days have memory sticks/ pen drives (whatever you wish to call them). Now i have known them to do the same problem that is happening with your drive, and its due to the format of the drive is not working e.g FAT on a NTFS system. So Choosing the Make Active works with memory sticks to. I know this is not your problem, but it has the same affect with both hard drives and memory sticks.

Why would he need to make it active when he isnt booting from it?

 

[joelbeveridge]

he doesnt need to to make it bootable. This will force the computer to assign it something, which will allow his to access his drive. But i do ask he try's a BIOS firmware update first. If your computer is ASUS you should be able to get some support from there download/driver area.

 

[Raffaz]

An active partition contains ya operating system, setting it active makes it bootable lol. Also ya computer only has one active partition so if ya change that, he wont be to boot his pc up

 

[joelbeveridge]

Wrong. lol. I had the same error with one of my drives, it was running Fat32 and my new system was NTFS. Now i made it a active partition (only active, not primary). This allowed me to convert my drive over to NTFS. And BINGO it showed up in My computer all happy and open wide..lol

 

[Raffaz]

why do all that when ya can do what i said earlier lol. I should have been clearer about the 1 active partition per computer, that would only apply if you have 1 HDD as its one active per drive

 

[joelbeveridge]

Yea its all good. Im alittle beered up now Raff so im just chillin..

 

[jimbo_p]

Hey guys, thanks for your replies (both drunken and sober!)

Unfortunately the only option, when the drive is plugged in and switched on, that it gives me is 'convert to basic disk'. Below that is Properties and Help.

If i click on convert to basic disc, it says it will need to format the drive and that all data will be lost!

 

[Raffaz]

Is that in disk management where your looking mate

 

[Raffaz]

This is what i found, might be more help. . .hopefully
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Windo...0e0d-4afb-a42f-00c1154cb3791033.mspx?mfr=true

 

[jimbo_p]

However, you cannot access data on the disk if you are running Windows XP Home Edition. To use the disk on Windows XP Home Edition, you must convert it to a basic disk, which destroys all data on the disk

Well that identifies my problem, but doesn't solve it, as my XP pro cd is back in the UK!!! Thanks for your help guys. Perhaps I'll go download Vista RC1...!