HD present but Windows doesn't see it

I am looking at a HD which is there but it's not.

It's a WD25000BEVT

I had been connecting it internally, as a second disk.

BIOS says it's there, correct
Hardware > Dev Manager, all present and correct
My Computer....ABSENT
DiskManagement....ABSENT
Speccy....all correct, even showing four (4) partitions
SeaTools for Windows...all tests PASS, faultless
HDTune Error Scan...zero defects

but I can't do a thing with it ! What is going on here, and how can I fix it ? (preferably without format)

I've tried a USB caddy, connected it to my Pavilion dm4-1050ea, and it doesn't seem to show

Dumb_Question
26.March.2015

Compaq Presario S5160UK DT261A under XP/SP3
Processor - Celeron 2.7 GHz
Motherboard - MSI MS-6577 v2.1
RAM - 2GB (1GB +1GB max) DDR PC2700
PSU - OCZ 500W
Nvidia GeForce 6800GT graphics card in AGP slot.

 

Strange, hook it up and in expand the disk management a LOT so you are sure it is not hiding down in the lower part of the window. Do a REFRESH, wait a few mins and if nothing happens try it again. Leave that window open and check the Device Manager to see if it is still there.
Do you have a Win 7 machine to try it on as a secondary internal drive?
You may have a formatting issue.
http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2510009

 

Thanks, DOA, for advising me to look again at DiskManagement again more carefully

I put the disk in an enclosure (SATA -> USB) for convenience.

Connecting it to my PC it again went through the routine 'New Hardware Found..' etc. and the disk showed in Device Manager but not in My Computer.
When I went to DiskManagement I noticed that Disk 1 was there in the bottom right section, with its little square box to the left and long rectangle on the right. Maybe it was not there before, maybe I did not notice it because this area was blank/white with no hatching or text in it.

I saw the disk was marked as 'Dynamic' and 'Foreign', in the little square box which I'd never seen before on any disk.

It seems that this happens when a bootable disk made in in Win98, Win2000 or XP Pro from another PC is attached to an XPHome system (or something like that). In XPHome the only way to use the disk is to convert it to a Basic volume losing everything on the disk in the process. This is what DiskManagement Help in XP Home tells me about 'Foreign'. Of course it does not say anything about disks from Win7 (which this certainly is)

I didn't notice it in DiskManagement in Win7 on my dm4-1050ea laptop, but it seems the procedure for accessing for accessing 'Foreign' disks is slightly different (it doesn't say whether it involves data loss).

I need to have a further look at different set-ups before I destroy the contents of the disk.

So this seems to be the explanation, for any who are interested.

Compaq Presario S5160UK DT261A under XP/SP3
Processor - Celeron 2.7 GHz
Motherboard - MSI MS-6577 v2.1
RAM - 2GB (1GB +1GB max) DDR PC2700
PSU - OCZ 500W
Nvidia GeForce 6800GT graphics card in AGP slot

 

Hi All,

In the intervening time I have discovered AOMEI sell a an item with paid versions of Partition Assistant and EaseUS have an item of freeware that enable conversion of Foriegn, Dynamic disks to Basic without data loss. I can't remember what the utilities are called now, I have references but not available at present.

I finally got around to looking at this again.
Still in an enclosure, I connected to my Lenovo W510 (W7) as the disk originally came out of an X61 running Windows 7.

In the intervening time, and maybe connecting it to the W510 it had changed from dynamic to invalid and the long box indicated unallocated space of 232GB ! Maybe this was caused when I looked at convert dynamic to basic in W7 but aborted when treatened data loss (the information I had never said data loss data loss would occur in W7). This was also the situation on reconnecting to my dm4-1050ea

I searched the internet and very soon came across this dicussion http://windowsforum.com/threads/dynamic-disk-invalid.3906/ on the subject which linked to this http://www.wilderssecurity.com/thre...-back-to-basic-disk-without-data-loss.191006/.
I loaded HxD and saw that in location sector 0, 1C2 was 42
but I was hesitant (to change 42 to 07 [basic]) because all the praising reports from the first thread/link appeared to be on disks with only one partition, and I beleived my disk had four partitions.

What to do now ? (aside from possibly moving this thread to software....)

Dumb_Question
11.April.2015

 

Some anomalies still (one very small partition [1985 sectors] shows in disk editor, but not elsewhere [like in Windows] - but it also a strange type particular to Dell I think and unallocated space does not show up as a partition - seems to absent from partition table - perhaps this is to be expected ??? I don't know what to expect really, is the MBR of this totally corrupted ?)

I was brave and changed the 42h entries to 07h (NTFS) lo two partitions did show in computer in Windows 7 (Pavilion dm4-1050ea Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit), and four partitions showed in disk management, not including the small one described above , system 100MB (not showing in computer), OS (bootable) 220GB, Recovery 9.76GB (wrong size somewhere, partition table gives it as 9.25GB), and unallocated at 2.91GB. I estimate unallocated space from partition table data to 2.85GB.

So, some anomalies to be ironed out still.

Does anyone know where DiskManagement gets its information from ? (it's not the same as that as in the partition table, which is why I suspect the MBR is corrupt....)

Dumb_Question
16.April.2015

 

Looks like you are going deeper than most people outside a HDD recovery shop ever go.
http://blog.creativeitp.com/posts-a...ot-record-mbr-with-a-hex-editor-hex-workshop/
may help, have fun and be careful!

 

Thanks for your answer DOA. That article has been my crib sheet !
I still haven't sorted out the little size anomalies (I can't find out where isk manager gets its info from, it can't be the Partition Table) but I have been able read the disk after overcoming another difficulty - 'Access Denied'....
Next time I shut down I shall see if wants to boot...probably not 'cos I think it's from a Dell and I haven't got one of those (I've something against them)

Dumb_Question
19.April.2015

HP Paviilion dm4-1050-ea - i5-430M- 8GBRAM - Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

 

Hi everyone

I have finally remembered to try to boot up from this troublesome disk.

It is connected as an external disk through a USB2 interface and the BIOS is set to try USB first.

So first I try it with the two partition set to set to NTFS (07h in relevant entries) as I last reported. It starts off booting into windows looking good (windows logo comes up for a second or two) then [it might have been elsewhere in the boot cycle], but after this about a 1/3 of a scree of white text on blue shows for a split second then I a get a screen of text (white on black) with a message about what has happened and suggesting that it might be Windows has been reconfigured (which it has I guess) and giving me 30s to choose between 'Repairing Windows' (or something like that) and booting normally - no option to shut down. So I choose 'Boot Normally. and get the same results, so I press the power off button to break the loop.

Now I boot from my known good (I hoped !) W7 system disk , change the 07 entries to what they were when I first had the disk i.e., 42, and rebooted. The same results, except that I don't remember seeing the blue screen with white text appearing on this occasion.

The reason I did not select 'Repair Windows' (or whatever the precise wording was) was because I did not the slightest chance of my good W7 HD being 'repaired' - is there any chance of that happening ? Or does it mean it's going to repair ONLY the external disk ?

Dumb_Question
9.May.2015

HP Paviilion dm4-1050-ea - i5-430M- 8GBRAM - known-good Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit