External Hard Disk With Hidden NTFS Partition

[mykweb]

Good Morning

I wonder if you dudes can possibily help me with my issue that has been plagueing me for a few days now.

I have a custom built shuttle PC, with dual core 2.2Ghz, 2 gb ram, ati dual dvi graphics, 2 sata hard disks (160 and 250 GB).

I have an external hard disk enclosure made by sumvision, It contatins 2 500GB maxtor hard disks, This unit allows you to have the disks in a raid 1 configuration which duplicates the data between the two incase of a failure.

I used to have windows vista ultimate on my pc, as I was using a copy I had from work, as I work in an IT department I was testing some software etc before we roll it out. I installed it and everything was fine. I had this installed when I bought my external hard disk. I initilised the disks using disk manger, and formatted the full 500GB. Copied the data and all was fine.

A few weeks ago I removed vista becuase I wanted to go back to XP, i copied all my data off and deleted and formatted the partition Vista was on, Then installed XP pro.

Setup Xp and everything was fine.

However when I plug in any of my external hard disks they show in Disk Manager as being a Hidden NTFS partition.

I used acronis to remove the data off the disk, copied it to my hard disk on my pc. So i now have my data back. I then deleted the partition and erase the data- then create a new Primary Partition for the full 500GB. The disk formats and then shows as a full 480GB partition and assigns it a drive letter of X.

I then reboot the pc.......and the freshly hard disk partition which was visible......Is now Hidden again. I then need to delete the parition and repeat it again.

I have tried to use Partition Magic to activate and Unhide the Partition. However you need a restart from PM to get it to activate....The same issue occours again....and again

Can anyone help or assist.

Mike

[RecT]

Hi Mike,

I've always found Vista is a lot more user friendly when it comes to partitions!

This sounds like a registry problem. Since you're using XP, you need to download TweakUI from the Microsoft website ->

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/d...powertoys.mspx

Download and open TweakUI. From the tree menu on the left of the interface goto 'My Computer --> Drives' and see if the drive you're referring to is checked there.

Let us know if that works!

[mykweb]

nope it does not see the drive

If i go to the task bar where the clock icon is etc... the usb manage allows me top safely remove the "usb mass storage device" but there is no drive letters next to it

plus the drive apears hidden in computer manager > devices and also in partition manager 8 and acronis disk software.

Mike

[RecT]

Do you ahve any data on the disks? Have you tried activating and doing a complete format?

[shawnpaul]

I agree with Rect

[maymajik]

Hi..

Thanks for sharing your thought with us.You are very generous person and outgoing person.
Tips is very well written and many useful information.





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