I have this silly vista machine (Acer oem install) from one of the guys at work. Loaded to the hilt with viruses and missing files. Even after getting some help already from the members here I ended up doing a reinstall / repair install and resetting everything back to factory defaults. Everything that was broken now seems to up and running properly except for one hard drive.

Before doing the reinstall I backed up all of the music and personal info to one of my spare 8 gig hard drives. Put it in the computer, formatted it, and loaded it with stuff to save (0.6gig of stuff). Pulled the hard drive out of the system so there was no chance of it getting wiped out with the reinstall.

So now the fun, vista is up and running great. All updates done, antivirus and firewall fixed, the works. Go to reinstall the backup drive and it's a no-go. Windows loads the drivers for it, recognizes it's plugged in but doesn't assign it a drive letter and won't allow me access to it. Tried the whole disk management console and it won't allow me to manually select a drive letter. Tried removing all the other drives but the master just to be sure it wasn't a drive letter conflict issue and got no where with that also. Even tried putting it in a xp machine and it shows up the same way. It's in the device manager and the disk manager programs, shows the proper sizes and amount used, even shows that it is formatted ntfs and it's considered a "healthy" drive but won't allow me to see the drive from an explorer window.

Have any you run across this problem before? If you did, whats the secret to fixing it please pretty please. I don't want to have to tell the guy I wiped all his family photo's and junk.

Quote: Originally Posted by vf1000ride I have this silly vista machine (Acer oem install) from one of the guys at work. Loaded to the hilt with viruses and missing files. Even after getting some help already from the members here I ended up doing a reinstall / repair install and resetting everything back to factory defaults. Everything that was broken now seems to up and running properly except for one hard drive. Before doing the reinstall I backed up all of the music and personal info to one of my spare 8 gig hard drives. Put it in the computer, formatted it, and loaded it with stuff to save (0.6gig of stuff). Pulled the hard drive out of the system so there was no chance of it getting wiped out with the reinstall. So now the fun, vista is up and running great. All updates done, antivirus and firewall fixed, the works. Go to reinstall the backup drive and it's a no-go. Windows loads the drivers for it, recognizes it's plugged in but doesn't assign it a drive letter and won't allow me access to it. Tried the whole disk management console and it won't allow me to manually select a drive letter. Tried removing all the other drives but the master just to be sure it wasn't a drive letter conflict issue and got no where with that also. Even tried putting it in a xp machine and it shows up the same way. It's in the device manager and the disk manager programs, shows the proper sizes and amount used, even shows that it is formatted ntfs and it's considered a "healthy" drive but won't allow me to see the drive from an explorer window. Have any you run across this problem before? If you did, whats the secret to fixing it please pretty please. I don't want to have to tell the guy I wiped all his family photo's and junk.

I'd Try Program Files-> Administrative Tools-> Computer management -> Storage -> Disk management

EDIT: another thing thats really weird is if you open an application like Ifranview you can hit open and go to my computer and your drive may show up. Nice thing is you can copy out of thease open windows. Its weird this works but my computer stoped recognizing usb drive but it still let me open them through applications.

Been there tried that. It shows up in disk management, both safe mode and normal. It shows the proper drive size, space used, format, status and everything. If I right click any other drive I get the option dialog to change the drive letter, but on this drive all I get is help and properties. It won't let me assign a drive letter.

This might sound dumb but did you check the jumper settings on the drive? Vista doesn't seem to deal with cable select so well. Other than that I would try the other channel.

Alrighty then, man did I mess this up. It does say it's an EISA configuration. Had no clue that meant a hidden recovery partition or how I managed to format this drive with that type setup. Now this is starting to really irk me. The last thing I want to do is lose the info on the drive by formatting it again.

Three words: Knoppix Live CD
(could be 2 words depending on how you view 'Live CD')
Having a linux live cd kicking around has always saved my butt, just mount the drive that isn't working and move the files to another drive reboot into windows reformat the offending drive and move the files back, and none the wiser

Actually I am working on the same process at the moment. I'm running Ubuntu on one of my folding machines. Was able to backup the drive onto my linux machine. Everything was still there thank goodness. Hopefully now I can format this drive with the links Fortran gave and give it a proper drive prefix or whatever and get this silly project back on track.

Well, I've come to determine I am a moron.

I got the files off the drive I wanted to save. Stored them on my Ubuntu Linux machine. Put the messed up hard drive back into the original machine, killed the partition and formatted with the win xp install cd. Then everything goes to heck from here. Reinstall it into the Linux box and the drive is recognized. Dang if Linux doesn't assign the thing as a restricted use root drive. I can't write to or change anything on it. Well after spending roughly 2 hours trying to figure that out I make the realization of the century. The darn Linux pc has a cd burner in it. Gave up on the hard drive for today and just burned all the files onto a cd like I should have done in the first place 3 days ago. Everything's back on the Vista pc now and life is looking better.

Thanks everyone for your help.