message is "can not read drive D"

[kgsuth]

A friend e-mailed me and asked if I would ask you fellows to help solve his problem.

Seems he formatted his wife's C drive ( with windows 2000, I believe). In this machine he has a second drive "D"(which also was formatted earlier with Windows 2000), but after formatting C he now can not seem to find D. The messages he gets is "the drive is not formatted" or "can not read drive D". He has data on there that he does not want to lose.

This is all the info he gave, but you perhaps need more detail to suggest an answer.

TIA for your help.

It seems that I have read of this problem being mentioned here before, but went searching and could not find anything resembling this scenario.

[Brk]

Unfortunately, it may be a lost cause. If you Right-click > Properties on the D: drive, it will show you the file system. If it's shown as "RAW," then you're going to need a data recovery program to attempt to salvage the files.

I've used GetDataBack a few times and it works quite well. Bad thing is, it's not free.

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

[jmatt]

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery is a data recovery program that supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS
file systems. The current version 3.x replaces the previous version 2.x, which is now over
6 years old.
Files accidentally deleted or any data from a formated hard disk, Zip, Jaz or floppy disk, can
be recovered along with original folder names and file Create and Modified dates within minutes.

---------------------------------------

http://2003.pricelessware.org/PL2003FIL ... deleteTool
Drive Rescue (freeware) OS: Win9x/NT/ME/2000/XP
(English)
Drive Rescue is a program for exploring your hard disk, and locating lost files on it. The idea
for this program originated from processing a disk with Scandisk--which suddenly contained no
data. Since off-the-shelf Windows methods could not recover any of it, this program was
successfully created, to find important information of the file system, to look for lost data
and to restore it.
Program description: http://woundedmoon.org/win32/driverescue19d.html
Download v1.9d (1,007,746 bytes) http://woundedmoon.org/win32/driverescue19d.zip

-----------------------------------------

http://home19.inet.tele.dk/svolaf/utilities.htm

Only weighing in under 2k, and taking up about 3-5k of memory, this little device driver scans your entire
drive for lost partitions, it then assigns read-only drive letters to them to allow you to
recover data.

[YeOldeStonecat]

What does disk manager show? Is D another primary or extended partition? As long as he didn't change the size of C when he re-installed....he should still be able to add the D partition as an extended (or primary, doesn't really matter) and have all the data there.

[kgsuth]

Thanks a lot fellows, we really appreciate the help.

So far he has tried using PC Inspector and Drive Rescue which both programs gave him the message:

"Bad Parameter in boot sector. Bytes per sector (0)= 0"

Whatever that means..!!!

He also tried GETDATABACK from Runtime and they were successful in showing him his old directory, but, to go further required a $ 240 Canadian charge.

He is hoping to find another Way!!!!

I'm sorry YOS but neither he or I know where to look for the disk manager !!! He has 2 separate drives and no partitions. Explorer just keeps telling him it is unformatted.

So if you can come up with more help, it will be appreciated, but we do thank you all for your suggestions so far.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally posted by kgsuth
I'm sorry YOS but neither he or I know where to look for the disk manager !!! He has 2 separate drives and no partitions. Explorer just keeps telling him it is unformatted.

Disk Manager is how to properly work with primary and extended partitions in single or multiple hard drives. It's the proper way of creating/managing them in Windows NT Based operating systems. FDISK is from Win9X.

Right Click "My Computer" once...select "Manage".

This brings up the Management Console...the place you can do 95% of whatever you need to do for Win2K/XP management.

Disk Manager is one of those you'll see on the list.

[kgsuth]

Thanks YOS I appreciate the info. My own system is WinXp and it appears the same in mine.

I just have to spend more time looking at these things - need to explore the system more.

[kgsuth]

Burke, - Thanks for your help with this problem.

My friend was able to recover all his information by using Get Data back from Runtime.

Did not cost a cent as he was able to open each D drive file individually and then save it with either photoshop or word depending of course on the format on his C drive.

A slow job. He said. But got the job done.

Your help was greatly appreciated.

Thanks to all of you who responded - Really appreciate it.

[Brk]

Originally posted by kgsuth
Burke, - Thanks for your help with this problem.

My friend was able to recover all his information by using Get Data back from Runtime.

Did not cost a cent as he was able to open each D drive file individually and then save it with either photoshop or word depending of course on the format on his C drive.

A slow job. He said. But got the job done.

Your help was greatly appreciated.

Thanks to all of you who responded - Really appreciate it.

Good deal!