so right now i'm running XP off of HD#2. what's the best way to access the data that's trapped on my other HD; windows doesn't recognize it at all. i've already tried running "fixmbr" in the recovery console

10/22/2008 8:17:27 PM

linux live cd

10/22/2008 8:31:59 PM

or hook it up to an external

10/22/2008 8:35:06 PM

format and reinstall

10/23/2008 3:50:25 AM

http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/download.htm?language=1

10/23/2008 9:20:16 AM

mbr stands for Master Boot Record. If the MBR on your drive #1 is "broken" you should still be able to see the partitions on it if you are booting from another disk. MBR broken just means you can't boot from that drive. It sounds more like your hd#1 is bad

10/23/2008 9:40:24 AM

Quote :

"If the MBR on your drive #1 is "broken" you should still be able to see the partitions on it if you are booting from another disk. MBR broken just means you can't boot from that drive."

That was my first thought too, until I read this:

Quote :

"The MBR may be used for one or more of the following: Holding a disk's primary partition table.[2] Bootstrapping operating systems, after the computer's BIOS passes execution to machine code instructions contained within the MBR. Uniquely identifying individual disk media, with a 32-bit disk signature; even though it may never be used by the machine the disk is running on.[3][4][5][6] "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record

10/23/2008 10:19:53 AM

does hdd#1 show up upon POST?

use UBCD to fix - http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

10/23/2008 11:20:00 AM

before i ran fixmbr i had access to the drive, it just wouldn't boot. afterwards, it disappeared completely--which scared the shit outta me b/c it warns you that you may lose your partitions. but, lo and behold, i just needed to reinstall my raid controller.

everything works now; i don't wtf caused it to screw up in the first place

10/23/2008 7:15:47 PM

wow, leaving out the fact it was on a RAID controller is a pretty big detail

10/23/2008 7:17:25 PM

it's integrated, i don't use it for raid; didn't think about it

10/23/2008 7:20:11 PM

so why don't you just turn it off if you're not using it?

10/23/2008 7:24:44 PM

sata drives won't work

10/23/2008 7:26:32 PM

usually there are 3 options for sata drives, raid, ahci, or ide. are you sure you can't change it?

10/23/2008 7:34:15 PM

not that i know of

10/23/2008 7:48:46 PM