Take the 2-minute tour ×

I'm not sure if this belongs to here.

My friend was installing Windows XP on his desktop. During installation he tried to delete a partition. It was taking long and he rebooted machine (idiot). Now XP, Linux installers say it cannot read disk. I've tried to attach this hard disk to other systems and try to access or format it but was unsuccessful. Please help me :(

share|improve this question
when you connect the drive to a windows box, does the drive appear in the disk management console? if so, what is the status? –  Molly7244 Nov 9 '09 at 2:15
no it does not comes in disk management console. –  TheVillageIdiot Nov 9 '09 at 2:40
You tried to reformat the entire disk and it failed? –  DaveParillo Nov 9 '09 at 3:12
Yes, I cannot format even entire hard disk. –  TheVillageIdiot Nov 9 '09 at 3:36
can you remove all partitions from that drive via disk management? if not, run DBAN over it. –  Molly7244 Nov 9 '09 at 17:22
add comment

3 Answers

It sounds like the drive, or at least the data on it, may be toast. You'll get a clearer picture of whether the drive itself is hosed by checking to see whether it's recognized in BIOS. If BIOS sees it, then try reading it with Knoppix: i've had Knoppix succeed at reading devices where all others have failed.

share|improve this answer
Yes bios can see it. It reports correct size also. I'll give knoppix a try. –  TheVillageIdiot Nov 10 '09 at 5:14
add comment

First off: How valuable is the data on the disk?

If this number is higher than $1000, stop fiddling and head to a professional recovery service. (Depending on your country)

If it is lower than $100, trash the disk, and buy a new one. You will never be able to trust the old disk again.

If the value is in between, follow these steps, until you give up because the time spent becomes more valuable than the contents of the disk: Attach the disk to a 'puter. Check if the disk is visible in the BIOS settings. If yes, boot any operating system, check the device manager list to see if the system sees the disk. If yes, check the file system list (disk management console) if the device is listed there.

Sooo.. If you answered no to any of the question, you should go for help that is cheaper than the value of the data.

If the disk is available to the operating system, but not mounted, you need to have a tool to recover the lost data structures. Try google. Try computer magazines. If you can read german, try ct 20/2009 which had an excellent article.

There is an abundance of cheap data recovery software available, each of which may or may not help you.

share|improve this answer
add comment

Also you could Try: attaching the HDD to a computer with windows 7, open disk management click delete volume ( delete all the partitions ) create partitions if needed ( shrink volume ) then put it back on its original pc, start Windows installation and check whether it detects HDD!!

(Windows 7/vista also seems to detect hard disks not detected by xp , also I found out that if xp cant detect a Hard disk, ubuntu/linux also cant detect it if they both OS are installed side by side )

Good luck!

share|improve this answer
add comment

Your Answer


