John:
Actually this was next on my list to 'try', however, the owner (my brother) asked me to send the 40GB to him. He
has someone who can recover the data for $25. I think he's dreaming but we'll see. In the meantime, now that I have
only the 80GB, I'm going to try partitioning it as master - if the old partitions are still there then perhaps the
40GB is recoverable after all?

Rick:
As I think 'smart' is the only issue with regard to powermax's 'failing drive' warning, testing the 80GB with
powermax, and one or two demo data recovery programs on the old pentium was also in my list of things to 'try'.
There is nothing I could find in the bios that allows enable/disable of smart, and Belarc already warned of 'no
smart drivers installed'. That was one of the issues I was going to work on once the drives were partitioned. The
Mobo is also set up for raid, also with missing drivers, and I'm thinking that may be playing a bigger role with
this problem then I first thought. As for virus possibility, I booted the unit with my McAfee emergency disk and
tried a scan but it found nothing to scan. Also, enabling the bios antivirus was one of the first things I did once
I received the machine.

So, the problem with the 40GB is out of my hands for now. I will be working the tests on the 80GB drive, both in
the 'old pentium' and in the unit it came in. I will update if I find anything worth mentioning - especially if
that guy can recover the data on the 40GB. Thanks to all for your thoughts and suggestions.

Al Thompson

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Sproule"
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Lost Partitions on Two HDD's


> Did you disconnect the 80GB driver completely to see if the 40GB (original
> drive) is still unbootable?  Maybe try setting it to single drive, instead
> of master, when it is the sole drive, if that is an option.
>
> John Sproule
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Al Thompson"
> Subject: [PCBUILD] Lost Partitions on Two HDD's
>
>
> > The 40GB...Pri Dos with 4 logical drives
> > Win ME on C:, along with D:,E:, & F: drives.
> > C: was active.
> > This was working fine.
> >
> > However, on the 80GB...
> > After creating drives G thru M (in the Ext dos partition) and exiting
> FDISK*, I was prompted to shutdown before
> > formatting the drives, as expected. I removed the boot disk in A:, then
> shut down. (oops?) Upon reboot she looked
> > at A:, then HD 0, and on to CD-ROM for the OS - "Boot disk failure: insert
> system disk..."
> > Once at A: I'm getting 'invalid drive specification' for all drives.
> > FDISK shows no drives defined on either HDD.
> > During post, both HDD's names are just strange characters - they were fine
> before**

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