newbie question about my hard disk

[ieh4f]

l have just brought a second-handed 30G hard disk, after l installed the hard disk, it shows up as D:, but there is a 20G E: shows up as well, could someone explain to me why there is an additioned 20G drive showing up?
and this afternoon l had to reboot my pc manually, cause it suddenly freezeed, after rebooting the E: just disappear, as well as the data inside it, could someone tell me how to retrieve the E:/data inside it? they are very important, somebody please help me.....

[redwudz]

It sounds like the drive has been partitioned into two parts, a D: drive (~10Gb) and a E: drive (~20Gb). Partitioned drives show up as separate drives on a PC.

It's been a while since I used ME. In XP, you go to 'Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Storage>Disk Management and it should show all the drives and partitions along with their setups. Not sure how ME works for that.

Maybe some with some ME experience can help you with retrieval.

[ieh4f]

my D: shows up as 30G but the E: shows up as 20G, does that mean the 20G E: is part of the 30G D if that is the case, how come my data in E: does not show up in D: as well? and does anyone know how to retrieve the E:/ data inside in Win98SE? sorry for all that stupid questions, but l am a rookie in computer and l need help desperately.....

[redwudz]

Well, that is confusing. If you started with a 30G drive, the sum of the partitions can't be any larger than that. A 30G drive would likely show up as a little less than 30Gb as the drive uses a few hundred Mb for it's own use.

I see I was mistaken, you are using W98SE, not ME. It's been even longer since I used that OS.

[ieh4f]

anyone help?

[Megahurts]

Is it possible that the drive is larger than 30g and the second partion is NTFS format which Win98SE can't read?

Download EVEREST home edition (goggle it) and check Storage/Logical drives. It will tell you the file system and more.

Chas

[ieh4f]

l dont think so, because l have access to the E: before, it is only after the pc freezing and rebooting, the whole E: just suddenly disappear, l have just found out after turning off the BLK mode of the secondary slave in BIOs, the E: reappear, but l cant access the drive, it says the device attached to the system is not functioning or something like that, and both free and used space is zero.....

maybe that guy who sold it to me mistakely gave me a 50G instead of 30G?

[isogonic]

hd manufacturers provide free utilites you can download, may be helpful.