Hard drive appears unformatted in one OS, not another

[C James]

I've just developed a very perplexing comupter problem;

 

One of my logical hard drives, F, can no longer been seen as formatted by this copy of Windows 2000

However, it's a dual-boot system, and booting into a different copy loads the drive just fine.

 

This copy (my main one) sees Drive F as unformatted.

 

I'm not entirely sure when this occurred, but I had a sudden shut-down (as if the plug had been pulled) earlier today, and noticed it soon after.

 

I also lost some firefox and google toolbar data, and both thought they were new installations.

 

I have a few tools, such as Partition Magic and Norton System Works, but I thought I'd ask for advice before blundering in and trying to fix it. The system is backed up on an external drive (detached, at the moment) so I'm at no risk of data loss, no matter what. What I would prefer to avoid is any OS re-install, as I have tons of installed software and re-installing would take forever. If I do end up doing a re-install, I might install Windows XP instead of 2000 pro, at least on this partition.

 

The "missing" drive is a logical drive. I have five physical hard drives, partitioned into two logical drives per physical one. The other logical drive on that physical drive works just fine. (the are IDE drives, BTW).

 

Second and possibly related question: My AVG anti-virus no longer updates; it stopped a few weeks ago, when a new version came out. It picks up nothing on a scan, but it's not using an updated virus database. It's offering me AVG 8.5, but it won't install, saying it can only work on 2000, XP, and Vista (and I'm on 2000). Anyone know of any other free virus scanners they would recommend?

[Hoskins]

I've just developed a very perplexing comupter problem;

 

One of my logical hard drives, F, can no longer been seen as formatted by this copy of Windows 2000

However, it's a dual-boot system, and booting into a different copy loads the drive just fine.

 

This copy (my main one) sees Drive F as unformatted.

 

I'm not entirely sure when this occurred, but I had a sudden shut-down (as if the plug had been pulled) earlier today, and noticed it soon after.

 

I also lost some firefox and google toolbar data, and both thought they were new installations.

 

I have a few tools, such as Partition Magic and Norton System Works, but I thought I'd ask for advice before blundering in and trying to fix it. The system is backed up on an external drive (detached, at the moment) so I'm at no risk of data loss, no matter what. What I would prefer to avoid is any OS re-install, as I have tons of installed software and re-installing would take forever. If I do end up doing a re-install, I might install Windows XP instead of 2000 pro, at least on this partition.

 

The "missing" drive is a logical drive. I have five physical hard drives, partitioned into two logical drives per physical one. The other logical drive on that physical drive works just fine. (the are IDE drives, BTW).

 

Second and possibly related question: My AVG anti-virus no longer updates; it stopped a few weeks ago, when a new version came out. It picks up nothing on a scan, but it's not using an updated virus database. It's offering me AVG 8.5, but it won't install, saying it can only work on 2000, XP, and Vista (and I'm on 2000). Anyone know of any other free virus scanners they would recommend?

 

I have questions!

Is this logical drive a boot drive for one of the OS's?

If it's not a boot drive, do you have applications installed on it that are seen between the two OS's - in other words, is the drive letter critical to both sides of the dual boot?

 

What is the status of the drive in Disk Management? Is it showing as "foreign media" or as unformatted, or simply not there?

 

Courses of action I'd consider:

Before you go any further, please verify that the backups on the external drive are really there, and that the dates are current, and that the backup software can open and look inside the actual backups (act like you're going to restore, just don't click the final OK). If anything looks hinky, back up the drive again from the partition that can see the missing data.

 

If the drive is showing as "foreign media" or "unknown", right click it and see if the option to "import foreign media" is available. If it is, do so and see if that rebuilds the drive data in that partition.

 

The health of this drive is very questionable at this point, I would not bother restoring data to the partition. I'd seriously consider replacing the entire drive. Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost can be used to image the partitions to another drive. It's likely Ghost could do all the partitions, recovering the "missing" data as it goes.

 

I'll dig around a bit for antivirus software, my "default" free AV is AVG. I'm a little WTF about the AVG on the Win2k.

 

You can PM me or email if you want. I'm happy to help.

[C James]

I have questions!

Is this logical drive a boot drive for one of the OS's?

If it's not a boot drive, do you have applications installed on it that are seen between the two OS's - in other words, is the drive letter critical to both sides of the dual boot?

 

What is the status of the drive in Disk Management? Is it showing as "foreign media" or as unformatted, or simply not there?

 

Courses of action I'd consider:

Before you go any further, please verify that the backups on the external drive are really there, and that the dates are current, and that the backup software can open and look inside the actual backups (act like you're going to restore, just don't click the final OK). If anything looks hinky, back up the drive again from the partition that can see the missing data.

 

If the drive is showing as "foreign media" or "unknown", right click it and see if the option to "import foreign media" is available. If it is, do so and see if that rebuilds the drive data in that partition.

 

The health of this drive is very questionable at this point, I would not bother restoring data to the partition. I'd seriously consider replacing the entire drive. Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost can be used to image the partitions to another drive. It's likely Ghost could do all the partitions, recovering the "missing" data as it goes.

 

I'll dig around a bit for antivirus software, my "default" free AV is AVG. I'm a little WTF about the AVG on the Win2k.

 

You can PM me or email if you want. I'm happy to help.

 

Neither that logical drive nor that physical drive are a boot drive for any OS.

 

The drive shows as unformatted in one Win2k install, but not the bare-bones one that I checked with (That shows the drive just fine, and accesses the files).

 

What I'm seriously considering doing is going into the other OS, copying the contents of the drive to another physical drive

(I've got about half a terabyte of combined HD storage, so no shortage of room) and then letting the OS that wants to format it do so. My backup media seems fine (I did check, but I'm keeping it disconnected for now, just in case this is a virus) but, this way I'd still have two copies. (I've already done the copying).

 

Speaking of Viri... I DL'd the trial of Avast anti-viri and installed it in the other OS. (I mainly use that one for testing software, and as a backup for the primary OS) It found a virus in the root of C: masquerading as an .htm file and the file date was yesterday, the day all this started. I stupidly forgot to write down the virus type. I removed it as part of a full system scan and rebooted, but so far no change to the HD visibility issue, either in the OS that can see it, or the one that can't.

 

No options for "Import media" in windows explorer or any other disk checking program that I have. I don't recall ever seeing that in Win2k.

 

I have a copy of Norton Ghost, but its an old one.

 

I dug around a bit regarding AVG: it looks like I might not have the latest update packs for Win2k. I never allow the automatic updates, and I haven't checked for updates lately, becuase I heard there were no more for 2k as Microsoft had ceased 2k support.

 

THANK YOU very much for replying. I appreciate it.

[Kia Zi Shiru]

my whole family uses Avast, I've never had any trouble with viruses, but my lil brother did, constantly... especially after my lil sis had been on his computer. But after Avast got installed on it (and cleaned up about 100 viruses and troyan horses and other crap), he never had any trouble again.

 

Avast does find Troyan Horses and it's free, a lot of payed for scanners won't find troyan horses. So be aware of that. The one that usually comes with windows itself (not sure what it is called) won't find troyan horses.