Do not see the contents of the actual disc

[fanks]

Hello!

I have a problem with my secondary hard drive. I have had another hard drive (X) plugged in (it was from another computer) which is now removed and the original hard drive (Y) is plugged back in (with the same cable). Unfortunately, when I load Windows, it shows me the information of the X hard drive, not the one I have now. It shows the capacity and free space and somewhat corrupted version of the file list that for the X disc which is not connected anymore. Still the model and size is shown correctly at the booting time and also device manager shows the real model/driver (of Y) and tells me that there are no problems with the particular device.

So, in short, instead of what really is inside a hard drive Y Windows shows me corrupted contents of now disconnected disc X. What should I do about this?

I have tried enable/disable the device. I have tried to uninstall it, but after a reboot it was back on again (with the correct name but wrong disc content information).

Thanks!

[soybean]

When you had X drive installed in your computer, did you have both drives connected to the same data cable?  

[fanks]

Yes, it was the same long (and wide belt-like) cable at a different plug in point. IIRC, I didn't plug off the data (or power) cable from the disc Y at any time at all. I unplug the power cable (IOW, unplugged the disc) of my primary disc (disc W) though at those times when I wanted the X disc to boot as the primary (although it never boot sucesfully as it was corrupt).

[Maksim]

(with the correct name but wrong disc content information)

What do you mean by the wrong disc content?

[fanks]

Maksim, I explained in the first post. It means, that I know what was in there and what it shows now certainly is not what should be in there. And I have also seen the contents (the root directory list anyway) of that X disc, and I can recognize now some of the files and folders which were in it now shown in my Y disc. And they were never in the Y disc.

And by "currupted" I mean that 1) most of the file names have funny symbols in them (but I can recognize at least 2 which were not in the Y but were in the X disc), the only folders there are - are "FOUND.000" to "FOUND.004" in which there are many, many "FILE0001.CHK"-like files. 2) There were definately more folders (and different than FOUND*, too) in the X disc anyway.

(I was now trying some video conversion software which by default put the converted file in this secondary disc; I hope it didn't cancel my chance to get back the real content of the Y disc...)

P.S. I just now ran a file undelete program and it showed some deleted filenames which I deleted from that X drive (but it shows them now for the Y drive).

[soybean]

Yes, it was the same long (and wide belt-like) cable at a different plug in point. IIRC, I didn't plug off the data (or power) cable from the disc Y at any time at all. I unplug the power cable (IOW, unplugged the disc) of my primary disc (disc W) though at those times when I wanted the X disc to boot as the primary (although it never boot sucesfully as it was corrupt).

Well, the idea of installing a drive from another computer as the primary drive, meaning it's your boot drive, was a bad idea.  Unless the two computers are identical, they have different hardware components and, therefore, different device drivers.  Also, Windows XP can croak in such situations and prompt you to re-activate your Microsoft Windows software license.  

Your description of what you see now on Y drive seems to indicate you must have had both drives connected to a power cord at one time.  I don't know how else you could be seeing files on Y drive that were originally on X drive.  

Really, I think you've got a mess that may only be solved by formatting your hard drive - the one you're going to use as the primary drive on your main computer - and reinstalling your OS.

[fanks]

Soybean, I'm now running my primary disc (W - which is neither X nor Y) now all right, and I don't see a problem with the Windows XP installation generally except for that particular Y disc problem. So, I don't see a need to format my current primary disc! (In addition, I wouldn't have place to back up all the data it contains.)

What I want to find out (and I hope it's possible) is how to get back the data which must be in the Y disc but are not showing up for some reason. How can they not appear and how can the OS show X disc filenames (distorted and only part of them anyway) instead?!  

[soybean]

Your original post talked about X and Y, not W.  You later introduced W.  I guess I'm not clear on the facts.

[fanks]

Yes, sorry about confusion. I introduced disc W in my second post. I have two discs originally (primary disc W and secondary disc Y) and then I tried to do something with that other disc (X), and now I have W still all right, but I don't see Y's actual file system.

I just now tried to plug disc Y into another slot (where my DVD reader is connected), but it still shows that corrupted file system and disc size of the X disc.

[soybean]

Are you absolutely sure you haven't mixed X and Y up?  Can you easily tell them apart by looking at them?  What make and size are they?  What is the drive format (NTFS, FAT32, FAT) for each of your drives?  In the older computer, was Y installed with a drive overlay, this is, a software tool from the hard drive maker to allow older computers to use large hard drives?

[fanks]

Yes, I can tell them apart for sure, as I never attached X disc into the system unit, I just plugged in the cables.

Well, the thing is that exactly the X disc is of a pretty small capacity (6GB) from a slow computer. I plugged it to mine computer to back up its data and try and scan/repair it if necessary so it could be used again (but it turned out that it is too corrupt to be repaired and Windows refuses to be installed on it even after I reformatted it).

I have now removed that X disc, but I cannot get my original secondary disc Y (80GB) to work again correctly. My primary disc (160GB) is working all right.

Disc W file system is NTSC but I'm not sure about disc Y as, I think, it is still showing the disc X data instead. It now shows FAT32 for the Y (on disc's properties), although I think it was NTSC too. I'm not sure if FAT32 was the original file system of X, as I have reformatted it now anyway.

[soybean]

To recap the situation, at one point, you had all three drives, X, Y, and W, running.  Right?  
And, you were having problems with Y, which was pulled from another computer, before installing it with X and W.  Your intent was to temporarily install Y in your main computer (with X and W) to retrieve some files you wanted from it.  And, it seems that you somehow transferred what was on Y to X, and now the only thing you see on X are some corrupt files from Y.  

I'm at a loss to know what to suggest.  Let's wait and see whether some of the regulars come up with some thoughts on this.  

If you're willing to pay for professional >data recovery< services, that might be an option.  I believe this is usually a rather expensive solution.  

[fanks]

Well, you're about right, yes, only X and Y are switched places.

So, yes, I have W and Y on my computer originally. X was a primary disc in another computer and did not work (could not start the OS). Then I plugged this X disc into my computer and backed up the important files all right. Then I wanted to reinstall the OS of X disc and booted it as primary (just switched off the W disc and reswitched X's jumpers).

At the beginning of the reinstalling/upgrading I found out that there was not enough space in X disc for an OS, so I decided to reload it as a slave disc once more and delete some files, but I had problems loading the W disc as primary (if the all discs were switched on, it tried to boot from X and froze, if I switched off X and booted from W and then tried to switch it back on (while the OS was running), it could not read the disc). I suppose that somewhere here it went wrong...

Anyway (having not yet discovered that I can set which one of the hard drives is booted from in the BIOS) I gave up deleting the files and decided that as I have a back up of the user files, I can as well reformat X and do a fresh OS install. At that point I reformatted the X disc but after that "Windows" setup informed me that the X disc was curropt, cannot be restored and that setup cannot continue.

Now, I disconnected disc X and boot from W. At first I still had booting problems as I could not boot with Y connected (as it tried to boot from it, but it doesn't have a OS installed). I'm not sure wether the system - whatever system it is at this point - could see it as the old Y disc or was taking it as the already disconnected X disc (which had OS installed on it, only corrupt). When I disconnected Y, it booted from W all right. Then I discovered where in BIOS I could set which disc to boot from, and I could boot with both discs connected. Unfortunately, it didn't see the Y disc correctly anymore.

I too hope that someone can help... I cannot afford to pay for professional data recovery company services.