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2 hard drives

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by dragnandy, Dec 19, 2007.

  1. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    you will still have 2 hard deives as can't combine 2 physical drives into 1.
     
  2. dragnandy

    dragnandy Regular member

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    oh i didnt mean hard drives but i meant like c: drive and d: drive.
     
  3. scorpNZ

    scorpNZ Active member

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    OK so you want to combine the two into one partition yes,firstly before you can do that the D drive must not be your recovery partition,is that what the D drive is,if it's a data partition then merging it to C is an easy process,your best bet would be either partition magic 8.0 or maybe acronis have that sort of software,or you could just transfer the data of Drive D to any free space in C drive or to the other hdd you have,then delete that D partition then use partition magic to resize drive C

    There are free partitioning tools out there like GParted etc,but i'm not familiar with them,linux live cd's also have partitioning tools
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2007
  4. dragnandy

    dragnandy Regular member

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    how do i check if its a recovery partition?
     
  5. scorpNZ

    scorpNZ Active member

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    Branded computers contain a 5-10GB FAT32 partition/s for recovery purposes,at least hp's do, inside the D drive there will be a icon which says RECOVERY,or just look in the ALL PROGRAMS list for pc help or recovery if it contains wording like system recovery then that's what the D drive will be.

    Who installed the hdd's in your system is it a branded model or home made,how come you have two hdd's one with home the other with prof,what make is the comp ,how big are the harddrives,what sizes are the partitions for each drive,what is stored in each D drive
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2007
  6. dragnandy

    dragnandy Regular member

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    wel first i had a 40gb hard drive, but that like stopped working. so my dad took the computer and got a 80gb hard drive, and the guy at the computer place gave him a XP home in the 80gb. then after awhile i got XP pro and i installed it in my old 40gb to see if itll work. and it does.

    i think both hard drives have d: as the OS and c: as everythign else. i dont have any recovery partitions, so i will try the program you suggested, partition magic.
     
  7. scorpNZ

    scorpNZ Active member

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    You should be able to pick up a copy of partmagic relatively cheaply 2nd hand,unless you buy new,your OS should reside on C not D.If you don't want to lose xp home in the future you ought to image it to another hdd,you can image an 80GB to a smaller hdd so long as the data does'nt exceed the smaller drives capacity,below is a link if you ever need help with drive imaging,advice is free etc
    http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2007
  8. dragnandy

    dragnandy Regular member

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    after i used the partition magic, i merged my two drives together. then after that, it said that windows had to restart so i restarted it. but after that, i got an error on the boot up menu, and it says something about an error code 100 something. and it froze after that, it said press any button to continue, but it just froze there. so now i cant even access my hard drive.

    anybody have an idea on how to solve the problem?


    edit: it says something with the partition table is wrong or messed up.
     
    Last edited: Dec 24, 2007
  9. scorpNZ

    scorpNZ Active member

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    I've googled but it could be any one of a number of issues causing it,i hope you did'nt attempt to merge hard drives but instead merged partitions.

    you could download fdisk & attempt a chkdsk or partition recovery
    http://www.fdisk.com/fdisk/
     
    Last edited: Dec 24, 2007
  10. dragnandy

    dragnandy Regular member

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    yes i mean partitions. c: and d: together. ill take a look at the link. how do i do a chkdsk or a partition recovery if i cannot even access my hard drive?
     
  11. dragnandy

    dragnandy Regular member

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    also, i got my hard drive with the pin covers facing the right way so its set to master, and my other set to slave. but when i run it, the hard drive boots normally but i cannot find my other hard drive. i looked in the my computers, but it wasnt there. am i doing anything wrong?
     
  12. scorpNZ

    scorpNZ Active member

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    The quickest way would be to reset it as master & reinstall the OS from scratch,assuming the drive has'nt failed & cables are inserted correctly.

    admin tools-computer management-disk manager
    is how you should be able to see the drive in the config you have now,if it's not there it can be only 2 reasons,the jumper settings are incorrect (slave = no jumper needed on the slave hdd) or the drive has failed

    partition magic & fdisk are bootable & are live cd's so put it in your dvd drive & reboot, you'll have to reset the slave as master,if you have an xp disk you could attempt a repair using the recovery console the same way,after you've selected R type help, then hit enter for options,start by using chkdsk,then if that does'nt fix it attempt fxmbr then reboot,if that don't work attempt fixboot if that failed to do anything reformatt reinstall
     
    Last edited: Dec 26, 2007
  13. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    does the bios see the slave drive?
     
  14. dragnandy

    dragnandy Regular member

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    how do i check the bios?? i never really learned that yet.
     
  15. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    if a clone(no name) computer then press del at the post screen before windows launches. if a name brand then can be f1 or something like that. should show on post screen anyhow.
     
  16. scorpNZ

    scorpNZ Active member

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    Was it the 40GB you attempted to merge if so,What's the make of your computer.
     
  17. dragnandy

    dragnandy Regular member

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    ok i got the slave drive to work and stuff with the master. but afterwards i tried to get the two drives to merge this time because last time i forgot to apply the changes so i think messed it up. but it got an error again and i lost like most of my movies (i used one of my d: partitions for movies), but luckly most of them were backed up. so now that my d partition is pretty much empty so i decided to

    -move all my stuff on the partition onto an external
    -then deleting the d: partition

    but i cant figure out how i can install the OS to the last parition (c: drive has no OS) without clearing all the information. would i have to make a new partition and install the OS there, then trying to merge those partitions?

    and i also noticed that one of my partitions, it says it has around 10gb used, but theres nothing in the drive. i deleted all the files and cleared everything, but theres still 10gb used when i check.
     
    Last edited: Dec 27, 2007
  18. scorpNZ

    scorpNZ Active member

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    Got some bad news for you D drive was a recovery partition after all.

    Answer the following question
    The 80GB has xp home installed on it YES ??
    Is it ok or is it the one that's stuffed up.??


    If the 80GB is stuffed up & you have no xp home disk to reinstall the OS or any recovery disks here's what you do to get it up & running,do not use the xp prof disk on it unless it's a retail version,if the xp prof disk is OEM, you neeed an imaging software instead like ghost 2003 onwards or acronis,you then set the 40GB as master whch has the activated copy of XP PROF,you then set the 80GB as slave & clone the 40GB to the 80GB,after you've cloned the drive & they've both restarted,it'll say detected new hardware,reboot computer,once it's loaded again shutdown comp,remove IDE & power from 40GB,do not reattach as a slave or master,you can use that as a backup,instead set the 80GB as master & away you go.No buying partition magic was'nt a waste of money you need both part magic & an imaging software for future use,it'll be the best money you ever spent on any software & will get you out of many a pickle when you realise you need backups of everything..*winks*
     
    Last edited: Dec 27, 2007
  19. dragnandy

    dragnandy Regular member

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    well i have windows XP home installation cd, but if i use it, would it wipe out all my data?
     
  20. scorpNZ

    scorpNZ Active member

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    Set it as master & insert xp disk & attempt a non destructive recovery,if the partition tables are'nt totally screwed it may be able to repair it & keep the data intact,personally your better off saving any data you want & do a full reformat & reinstall

    if you can't get to the data you want to keep thru the other hdd set as master then a non destructive recovery is your only hope, otherwise it's reformat time & invest in an external hdd or better still two of em.
     

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