Windows XP forum: Missing D drive

1. A USB-stick he took out.
2. A CD or DVD drive that went south and needs to be replaced.

Kees

Its my secondary hard drive guys , its fairly important b/c it holds a lot of my memorable pictures and videos of friends and family . =(

Surely you have a backup of those fairly important data?

If not, and it isn't recognised even after you check the cables and after you put it in an external enclosure (so it becomes an external hard disk to connect to your USB drive) it's time to find a data recovery company and pay them to get your data back.

Kees

i do not have a back up , and its my secondary internal drive.

You only lose what you don't backup. Some people only learn it the hard way. Sorry.

Kees

thank you Bob for your answer , but i believe my problem is a bit different.

i dug deeper , looked through the device manager , right clicked on the D drive , and it says:
this device is working properly , but the Location is 0 (0)
my C drive (primary drive) Location says 1 (1)

Would you (Bob) or anyone know what this means ?

Try looking in Disk Management. See if the disk is recognized there. If the computer says it is location 0, (0) then it is being recognized. My own main hard drive has that location(Location is 0 (0) )in Device Manager.

If you want the files back you recover then first with tools and software. After the files are safe you can, in Disk Management partition, format the refreshed drive. There are some that find drives vanish if some USB drive is plugged in but I don't read any such clue here.

It's all about the files in most cases.

Recovery software free, free to try is at http://forums.cnet.com/7723-7588_102-354911/lost-and-found-or-the-storage-forum-sticky/?tag=contentBody;threadListing
Bob

hmm .. how come my setup is the other way around ? C drive as 1 (1) & D drive is 0 (0) ? is this common ?
and how do i access disk management ?

i can get to disk clean up , defrag , system restore etc. but nothing labled disk management

System management or such. There are plenty of tutorials on Disk Management and some are put off by using the Start, Help and Support buttons on the PC.
Bob

I'm guessing you want to know why this failed and why the location is this or that. Sorry but I can't know that as the events that lead up to this failure is unknown. It could be malware or an unlucky power outage at just the wrong time. I can't guess why but have recovered far too many drives to write it rarely happens.

The one thing we do know is "we only lose what we didn't backup." Some folk are upset about this.
Bob

hahah ! i totally agree Bob ! *Hi 5* on that last line ~! maybe they want me to suffer as they already have huh ? oh well ~

but seriously , i appreciate everyones answers here (Bob , Lacsr , Edward), i will try my best with your guys' suggestions and update with the results .

your C: drive actually being the master drive on the secondary IDE interface with your D: drive having been added later. What does your BOOT.INI tell you with its ARC paths?

Using the default Administrator account in Safe Mode use Disk Management to see if the drive shows there (it should) then right click the drive and look at its properties and the security tab to see if someone has denied full control to Everyone.

Also, are you positive about the EXACT WORDING of the message you see?

It might also have been hidden by someone or some malware. Open the Registry Editor by going to Start/Run and typing in "regedit" (without the quotes). Find your way to...

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies

Click on "Explorer".
Find the "NoDrives" key in the right column (if the key is not there STOP as it isn't hidden).

If the NoDrives key is present take a look at the key's value. if it is anything but 0x00000000, change it to decimal 0 (which is 0x00000000) by right clicking and selecting modify then select DECIMAL BASE and type in 0 (that is ZERO not Capital O)

A.
yes the C drive is the master and D is slave , that i am sure of.
B.
i will try to do this
C.
The wording of that message i saw is probably off by a few words but for sure it was along the lines of "the D drive being turned off" , by who/what ? thats where my memory skews off
D, E , F , G :
i will definitely try all your suggestions , as you seem very professional w/ this matter . and i thank you for your help =)

ok , so i just performed the regedit . looked at it and it was some other value other than "0" , so i went to decimal base and modified it back to 0x00000000 . nothing changed , but hopefully it did something positive for my comp.

sadly no return of my D drive .

on another note i did do some more research yesterday , looked at the ide diagnostics , i had it run a check for the drives . C drive passed , while D drive failed and came up w/ a return code 7.

i googled the return code 7, and after reading some forum links , it points to being a failed/near death for my D drive . im still being optimistic , but what are your suggestions guys ?

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/use-ubuntu-live-cd-to-backup-files-from-your-dead-windows-computer/ and more is noted at

http://forums.cnet.com/7723-7588_102-354911/lost-and-found-or-the-storage-forum-sticky/?tag=contentBody;threadListing

Bob