I had a drive running the OS for my old computer. It was running Win2K on an NTFS partition (across the whole drive). Well, I wanted to put it back into my old computer as a file storage drive. So I popped it in the machine as a single drive, and tried booting up with any old boot disk I could find online, and tried reformating the drive. This didn't work so hot. Eventually, I think I tried fdisk and that said it deleted the partition. However, now no matter what I do I can't get a machine to recognize the drive. It simply won't see it no matter what I do. I've never been very good at the beginning stages of formatting drives. What should I do now??

Basically, my goal is to make the drive one large 20GB FAT32 partition.

Go into your computer's BIOS and see if it'll see the drive (you'll probably have to ``Scan for IDE Disks'' or something similar). If it can't see the drive, then your OS won't, either.

It's possible you've got it plugged up wrong, or (my favorite) forgot to plug the power into it. But if you're sure you've got it plugged in correctly (check both ends of the IDE cable) and your conmputer still won't see it, it's probably simply dead.

I'll check the BIOS. I can't remember at the moment whether it was recognized at the boot or not. I'm pretty sure it was connected right. I did have problems with the jumpers (old drives have confusing labeling on them), but as the only drive on the cable, no jumpers should have made it work anyway.

The thing I just can't understand is that the drive worked until I did this to it. I don't think I could have done anything to physically damage the drive. Is there a way to permanently break a drive without physically damaging it? The odd thing is that this same thing happened to me with another drive in trying to format Win2K off of it.

as the only drive on the cable, no jumpers should have made it work anyway

Not necessarily. I've come across a few drives where that specifically doesn't work. Go to the drive manufacturer's home page. All of them I've ever tried have good specs for all of their drives they ever made. (Case in point.)

no jumpers should have made it work anyway.

Only if it's a Western Digital.

Your problem may be trying to use fdisk with an NTFS drive. I have a DOS utility that will kill the data on the drive very quickly (whether it has a drive letter or not). I will not post it here since most AV software thinks it's a virus. Let me know if you want it.

Okay, well I can't remember if that's exactly what I did, but if I did, I made sure that the label on the top verified that it meant cable select. Again, I'll go through the BIOS and see if it's recognized. I'd hate to lose a nice 20GB drive.

Two unrelated questions:
1) is it possible to, I don't know, "reset" the settings for autocompleting passwords in Windows? Like, if you're checking web mail on your computer, and in the past you've told it not to save the password. Is there a way to delete all these instances and start from scratch?

2) What is the best way of transfering files from one PC to another? I have an Archos MP3 jukebox, which would do a good enough job, but is there a good way to connect the computers directly? I'm not sure if I have an A-to-A USB cable with me, but if I did, is there a way for me to transfer them that way? I've read about programs that automate this for you, but I'd like it if there were a way to transfer them manually without having to pay for any software.

Thanks.

You mention deleting the partition but not creating a new partition. It won't show up to format until it's got a partition on it. Can you not see it in fdisk?

Matthew

hmm, you may be right. I was pretty busy at the time studying for finals. Not really paying attention. I'll see what's up tonight Thanks everyone. You've been very helpful. I'll post back after I've tested all this out (including Rob's .com file of death )

Cable select means something different than only drive. Avoid cable select at all costs (IMO).

1. Assuming you're talking about IE's autocomplete, Tools->Internet Options->Content->AutoComplete, I believe.
2. Connect them via ethernet and set up file sharing.

1) thanks!
2) what type of ethernet cable? I've always been confused about the difference. Anyone care to explain a bit? Is there a good way to tell from the wiring which type I have?

While a full explanation of computer networking is outside the scope of this forum, generally, you either want to have two computers connected directly together by a crossover cable (so, 2 computers and 1 cable) or, preferably, have each computer connected to a hub via a normal cable (so, 2 computers, 1 hub, 2 cables).

If you can look at the connector on your current cable, you can usually determine what type of cable it is. Hold it flat so that you're looking at the clip side. Look at the first three wires on the left and the sixth wire. Determine what the colors are (keep in mind that some of the wires will be solid colored and some will be striped, usually with white). Then fingure out the colors of the wires in the connector on the other end of the cable in the same way. If they match up, then it's a normal cable. If wires 1 and 2 on one end are wires 3 and 6 on the other end, and vice versa, then you have a crossover cable. The other four wires are unused in most ethernet applications, and, therefore, irrelevant.

Of course, setting up actual networking once you have the cables proper is non-trivial as well. Try reading the FAQ entry about ethernet. It should give you some ideas.

If all efforts fail under Windows, try booting up a Linux and see what it says...
Linux fdisk might have better luck than the Windows version - seen it before...
Toms Root&Boot disk, Linux Bootable Business Card, Knoppix or something like that that doesn't require anything on disk. Toms is about 2M, BBC about 50M and Knoppix about 700M

/Michael

Hooray! After a few fdisk attempts and a couple formats and a LOT of jumper changing, I finally have my mom's new computer booting with my old 20GB HDD as the secondary file storage drive. That's reasuring. Now, as a Christmas present, I'm going to take all the recordings of stuff I've been doing at school and put them as wmv's on her new computer.

Thanks again guys!