I am using a Compaq T8000 (purchased in Nov. 2002), running XP-Home Edition.
Drive C has a capacity120GB with file system NTFS. Drive D (an internal
"slave" drive) should have a capacity of 80GB. I also have several external
USB hard drives that I use for backups and storage. Everything worked well
until today. I was using an I/O Magic portable hard disk (Maxtor 7200RPM --
40GB), and I did not notice any problems. However, after I unplugged the
I/O Magic disk, I suddenly could not access my internal Drive D. It says
that Drive D is not formatted. I checked the I/O Magic disk, and I can't
see any problems there -- all my data is still intact. I rebooted, but
still have the same problem -- Drive D is not formatted (and yet I was able
to use it yesterday). I did a search for this problem and found numerous
references to the external disk suddenly not being formatted, but that is
not my problem. The only relationship in my case is that an external disk
was plugged into the USB port immediately before I saw this problem. None
of the sites I read had a solution except to take the computer to a tech
shop to try to retrieve data.

One other point I should mention is that I did have another I/O Magic disk
that suddenly "went bad" some time ago. By that, I mean that it could not
even be formatted. That time, too, I did not know what caused the
problem -- but the problem was related only to that disk and not to my
internal hard drives.

Now, the good news is that I could go ahead and format Drive D myself
because I will not lose any data. I have multiple backups of *everything*
and even alternate disks from home to the office every few weeks to make
sure that I will have a copy even if everything at home were destroyed or
stolen. However, can anyone explain what might have happened to cause this
problem so I can avoid it in the future? And, most important, I would hope
to avoid a similar problem with Drive C.

Thanks,
MaryL

First off, you describe your issue very well. It's very hard to know why
a drive suddenly reports itself as unformatted. Doubtful it was some kind
of lettering collision. You might want to take a look at the System event
log and see if any IDE controller or drive errors have happened recently.
If I had to speculate, I'd say the Partition table has been corrupted. There
are recovery tools but your plan to just reformat is probably best. If you
can afford the time, I'd do a full format, not quick just to verify the
integrity
of the drive itself.
Event Log:
Click Start, Run (type) EventVwr.Msc [Enter]
Expand System and scan Right Pane for red icons that denote errors.

"MaryL" <stancole1@yahoo.comTAKE-OUT-THE-LITTER> wrote in message
news:eY7cRDySIHA.3916@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...

Thank you very much. Now, I hope you can decipher what I found. There were
a whole series of errors with red icons, most from today. The messages
appear in "clusters" within a short time span. Each showed: Error/Today's
Date/Time/Disk/None (under Category)/7 (under Event)/N/A (under User/ and
the computer ID number. One "cluster" or grouping will be followed by a
series of Information listings -- also for today -- but no errors with them.
Then will come another group of errors, then another group of Information,
etc. There is a very long list of these messages. When I scrolled to the
bottom, I could see that the error messages actually started two days ago
(12/28/2007). What type of information can I extract from this?

Incidentally, my earlier reference to Maxtor was actually to my internal
Drive D (the one with the problem) and not to the I/O Magic extrnal drive.

MaryL


"R. McCarty" <PcEngWork-NoSpam_@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:OU0a5LySIHA.5208@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

You Double-Click each Red icon and the details box for the event will
be shown. Included will be an Event ID# and a brief description of the
error. It's likely you'll see mention of IDE/ATAPI or disk drive was not
able to write data.

"MaryL" <stancole1@yahoo.comTAKE-OUT-THE-LITTER> wrote in message
news:OpyrlpySIHA.3864@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...

On Dec 30, 12:16 pm, "MaryL" <stanco...@yahoo.comTAKE-OUT-THE-LITTER>
wrote:
Have you looked at your disks in Control Panel/Administrative Tools/
Computer Management/Disk Management? It may be that rather than
losing a drive, you just somehow got your drive letters out of whack.
You can rearrange which partitions get which letters in Disk
Management.

<a2mgoog@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:8108dd1d-50b6-43e2-86d1-9ced2927e2da@i12g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
I checked the location you suggested. Only two drives are shown (which
would be correct since I don't have any external drives connected right
now). Disk 0 (bottom of screen) appears to be Drive C, and Disk 1 appears
to be Drive D. Both are listed as Healthy (Active). However, Drive D shows
100% free space, and that should not be correct.

MaryL

I double-clicked on several red icons. Each one showed that Drive D has a
bad block. When I clicked on the location for more information, I found
this explanation: "The device has a bad block of memory, which Windows
attempted to read. The data might be missing or corrupted." Under User
Action, it says: "If this event is logged regularly, replace the hard disk
drive." I hope that won't be necessary, but I'll reformat first. I know I
will eventually need a new computer and was looking at some this week. A
tech at Staples said it might be a mistake to get Vista at this time because
I have a number of peripherals that I could not afford to replace (two
printers, slide scanner, router, cable modem, etc.), and he said Vista is
not compatible with some devices. I haven't looked any farther than that as
yet because I would rather not spend the money for a new computer if I can
put if off for awhile.

MaryL

"R. McCarty" <PcEngWork-NoSpam_@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:OVb1%23rySIHA.2268@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...

If you format the disk/volume, don't take the Quick format mode. Let
Disk Management format and check the clusters. Every drive has extra
or spare clusters to remap the ones marked bad. A full format will take
much longer but check for any unreliable areas on the disk surface.

As to Vista, it's biggest issue is the "Public Perception" that has set in.
I hear the comments all the time "Need 2+ Gigabytes, it's slow" and
several other real & imagined problems with it.

Peripheral support can be a problem so it's best to check vendor sites
and see if your particular model has Vista drivers/support.

"MaryL" <stancole1@yahoo.comTAKE-OUT-THE-LITTER> wrote in message
news:ObUIdIzSIHA.4476@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...

On Dec 30, 2:11 pm, "MaryL" <stanco...@yahoo.comTAKE-OUT-THE-LITTER>

Oops, that doesn't sound good. I doubt that your USB drive had
anything to do with it; it sounds more like a hardware failure. There
are disk utilities that can do non-destructive formats, but since you
have good backups, what I would suggest is reformatting it and then
running as many diagnostic programs as you have or can find. I find a
program called Speedfan
http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
very useful; it is freeware, and it shows you the SMART data from your
drive, including read and write errors, and tracks their increase over
time. Also very useful for monitoring the temperature of your drives
and CPU. Good Luck!

Thanks for all your help! I will do a full format tonight and let it take
as long as necessary.

MaryL


"R. McCarty" <PcEngWork-NoSpam_@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:OFqwsMzSIHA.1208@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...

Thanks. I'll look into that program, and I'm going to do a full format
tonight.

MaryL

<a2mgoog@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:18771cae-8ad7-4ec0-95bd-bfd96e2fcc3b@s19g2000prg.googlegroups.com...

On Dec 30, 2:19 pm, "MaryL" <stanco...@yahoo.comTAKE-OUT-THE-LITTER>
wrote:
Well, at worst it sounds like you just need a new drive, and they are
cheap now. Outpost.com (AKA Fry's) almost always has some good deals;
just looking now, they have a 500GB Seagate retail kit (i.e. includes
cables and software) for $97, or a 300GB Maxtor for $60, or a 750GB
External (including the enclosure) for $169. And you can still use
them when you do get a whole new PC.

"MaryL" <stancole1@yahoo.comTAKE-OUT-THE-LITTER> wrote in message
news:evBwvDzSIHA.536@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
If disk management detects 100% freespace, there is no partition to format.
Sounds like the mbr area is bad at minimum.
Dave

"MaryL" <stancole1@yahoo.comTAKE-OUT-THE-LITTER> wrote in message
news:eY7cRDySIHA.3916@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
I suddenly could not access my internal Drive D. It says
Thanks for the help, everyone. I think I learned a few more things about my
computer -- and that's always good. Unfortunately, it looks like Drive D is
toast. I tried twice last night to format. Each time, Windows eventually
returned the message that "Drive D cannot be formatted." Since I have
multiple backups on external hard disks, I haven't lost any data. One of
you pointed out some good sources for a replacement. I may not even bother
replacing the internal "slave" hard disk since I used it exclusively for
backups, and larger-capacity external are now so much less costly than when
I bought this computer 5 years ago. This was a lot better than having the
same thing happen to Drive C -- that would have taken *many hours* of work
to replace all the programs and settings, whereas Drive D only held data
that I already have on other disks.

MaryL

On Dec 31, 5:40 am, "MaryL" <stanco...@yahoo.comTAKE-OUT-THE-LITTER>
wrote:

If you buy a Maxtor or Seagate retail kit, it comes with software that
is a simplified version of Acronis backup. You can also download it
for free from the Seagate website, and it will work if you have a
Seagate or Maxtor disk in your PC. It will allow you to take an image
of your C drive that can be stored on an external drive, and can be
restored in a few minutes. It also allows you to make a CD that you
can boot from (if your PC isn't too old) to run the software when
Windows won't boot.

As noted in another thread, you can partition your disk so that your
C: drive is only 10GB or so, and that's usually plenty as long as you
store your data on another drive or partition. I recently restored my
C drive using this software, and it only took 15 minutes. Another
benefit is that you can easily retrieve individual files from the
backup image; it just looks like another drive in Explorer.

<a2mgoog@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:2d7256b2-f6f2-4b4d-a6f3-7fb131635dbd@i7g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
Thanks. That's a good idea. By coincidence, I recently bought Acronis but
haven't had time to go through the rather extensive help documents to learn
how to use it. I hope the learning curve isn't as steep as that would
appear.

MaryL