What the HELL can I do with this DELL?

by 9 replies
12
Know anything about DELLS?

Wish I never bought one.

I have just reformatted the C Drive and have 2 other additional drives connected to it.

The DELL does not recognise these drives as having information on them.

I have tested the drives on a generic computer and the info is still there.

However, when I go to the Computer Management on the Dell - the drive is listed, but when I try to explore the drive, it asks me to format it.

I know if I format it - I will lose everything.

Any ideas on how to get this DELL to recongnise these additional drives again?
#off topic forum #dell #hell
  • Banned
    seems like you re-partitioned without deleting the current partition.

    edit- just take all ur info and put it on a thumb drive, then reformat
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • Yeah - Good Idea.....

      Might need a large thumb drive.

      Thanks
      • [1] reply
    • Hi Gerry

      It's probably a registry error issue, drives may vanish in Windows Explorer, Device Manager, etc. if a third-party CD-burning package has been uninstalled and Registry references for some code modules aren't removed successfully. This patch and a reboot usually will restore the missing drives. Any third party package still required will then have to be re-installed.
      Download the cdgone.reg patch from this link. Follow the included instructions. Should fix this for you.

      cdgone download

      Paul
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Open the case.
    unplug the two drives, leaving only the orginal drive plugged in.
    Reformat and reinstall windows.
    Plug the two extra drives back in.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Here's a link discussing an issue with Firewire
    It seems disabling it has helped some with this trouble.
    Windows XP Won't Recognize WD Ext Hard Drive
    lots of ideas on that link
    Good Luck
    some where it was suggested to reassign a different Drive letter to the disc could remedy it too.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Do you have the drives set as slave?
  • If you have another computer you can use this:

    Cables Unlimited

    I bought one recently to salvage the contents from the hard-drive of a laptop that killed over. It's compatible w/ 2.5 and 3.5 inch hard drives. You just drop the drive in the slot, and it turns it into an external drive via USB - to allow you to retrieve the contents. Good to have around, if you're not consistent w/ your backups.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Drives didn't have ANY physical format standards until LONG after they were created! The actual drive HAS to follow the CSH standard. THAT is just a fact of life. Some standards, like SCSI really don't, but the computers do because they once controlled the disks. Older systems couldn't properly handle larger disks, so things started getting confused, and there was also no way to know the size of a disk, so they had to be told how the physical format of the drive was.

    On EXTERNAL drives, the driver and HBA take care of this. On INTERNALS, the BIOS does by converting internal old CSH standards to ones compatible with your drive. If they are wrong, things can get SCRAMBLED! If the scramble affects your partition block, you won't see partitions.

    SO, if you have an INTERNAL drive, THAT may be your problem. Check the bios. MAYBE you can set them the same and have it work. If not, TRY LBA(a standard that was introduced sometime in the 90s I believe). That MIGHT work. Try READING some LARGE files before assuming things are OK.

    Steve
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Banned
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