Computer help: Second hard drive goes from NTFS to RAW after XP install

Second hard drive goes from NTFS to RAW after XP install

Hi, gang:

I had a rather nasty situation occur recently and I was hoping more experienced minds could explain what happened.

I have a 2.2GHz eMachines T2240 tower system with two physical hard drives - one 40 GB which holds Windows XP, and a second 80 GB drive from Samsung used for data storage (video and music files). I ran the Windows XP installation specifying I wanted the C drive (th 40 GB one) to be formatted. No options say anything about other drives. From previous installations in the same manner, nothing needed to be done with the second hard drive; Windows would simply recognize the drive after coming back up.

The formatting completed and XP was reinstalled. But when I went to Windows Explorer to try to access the second 80 GB hard drive it gave the message ''D:\ is not accessible. Access is denied.'' I was baffled - I hadn't changed anything on the drive and before the installation of XP I could see it just fine.

I went into XP's Disk Management function (an administrative feature) and it showed the C drive (40 GB) as ''System'' and the D drive (80 GB) as ''Active''. Both drives were labeled ''Healthy''. The D drive indicated about 17% free, which was correct. But no matter what I did, I just couldn't Explore the drive to access the files that were there. When I did a check of the drive Properties it indicated that the format had mysteriously changed from NTFS to RAW, meaning the system (I guess) now thought this was a new drive. Something, apparently, got corrupted. But what?

I wound up reformatting the second 80 GB drive. What else could I do? Thankfully, the files were not super-critical.

My questions:

1. Did I incorrectly assume that XP would find the second hard drive?

2. Should I have disconnected the second drive before re-installing XP? Did I commit a procedural error?

3. I tried, unsucessfully, to use mediaRECOVER to try to recover the MPEG-2 files on the drive. Can anyone recommend an affordable utility for retrieving the ''lost'' files on the second drive?

4. Do Samsung drives have some kind of physical flaws? I have a rather dim view of Samsung products since having had a VCR that died prematurely and a camcorder that required service within its first year of use.

Thanks, all!

Charles
Houston, TX