Are saying that you installed Western Digital's EZ-Bios which has NEVER worked properly?

Your motherboard should have a controller to handle the larger hard drive. The bios will show NO hard drive present when the computer boots initially, but the controller chip will identify it as the boot process continues. If you don't have it on board you probably have a controller card which does the same thing.

What you have described points to an improper formating configuration.

John

fily: I installed their software because it enabled large drive support in Windows 2000 (a reg entry somewhere). I'll give that CIA Unerase a try. That might work (I hope!) I also didn't re-partition or format the drive. I was using my computer when it stopped responding (i'm thinking the fat got overwritten by windows). It looks like an unpartitioned drive to Windows and Linux.

craftech: No, I didn't install EZ-Bios. I've had a bad expereince with that years ago (with a 2gb drive) so I've never used that again. Datalife is their software to initilize a HD bigger then 137gb for use in Win98, 2k, or XP. Plus it has some diagnostic tools to help scan the drive for errors. The motherboard recoginized the drive too (all 160gb).

I put the drive in my firewire enclosure but no dice. I'm downloading some software now to see if I can access it. The wierd thing is that the 2nd partition still works. :)
thanks for the tups!

Don't use any recovery or unerase tools and don't reformat or repartition until you have tried other things.

In your original post, it is very confusing to follow the chain of events. You did install Datalife, but you didn't install Datalife on D:. I don't follow all that. However, if you have a BIOS that fails to address disk space above a certain point (and there are about a dozen such boundaries that have been reached, if you go all the way back to the first HD under DOS), then you have to use mapping software. The alternative to using mapping software, which is always a better way to go -- if it is available -- is to update your BIOS. You will need to know the motherboard manufacturer, model number, and chipset.

Does Datalife have some sort of diagnostic tool? You might see if it can provide some help.

You might also try physically removing the drive and attaching it, either as a master on its own channel, or as a slave to another drive, in another computer, preferably one that is quite new (so as not to have any issues with larger hard drives). See if you can get the data from it that way. Back when we were at the 32 GB boundary, I had a 40 GB drive that didn't behave well on a computer that wouldn't address disks above 32 GBytes and I was able to recover all the data by putting it in a newer computer that had no problem with a 40 GB disk.

I'm confused too. :)

Datalife doesn't install on the 160gb drive. It's a special program to format/partition HD's that your bios/OS can't support. Not like those really stupid large drive programs from years ago.

I checked my BIOS date: 12/29/03. I checked my MB manufacture date: January 2003. It's an Asus A7V8X-X. I remembered when I looked up the info, this MB supported the latest stuff out there (except SATA, didn't need that): 8x AGP, UDMA 66, 100, 133, DDR 400, and a 333mhz bus (can be overclocked more).

I checked the drive with the datalife tools. Last night it was saying something was wrong with the drive. Now it says nothing is wrong, just needs formated. I tried CIAErase, but it didn't reconize the drive. I also tried GetDataBack from Runtime Software. It read the drive (no writing necessary!) but couldn't find anything to recover. All I REALLY needed were the veg files. I still have the footage on tape.

However, on my firewire drive I ran the GetDataBack and restored some stuff I deleted a couple days ago. No veggies, but some of the video's I used came back. Here's what I think happened:

I re-installed Win2k. Didn't update for 137gb+ drive support. When I wrote to the 2nd partition, I think windows didn't know what to do and overwrote parts of the first partition. Henc the lack of it working.

So, since I can't get anything back, i'm getting everything I need of the good partition andre-formatting the drive. :)

Thanks for everyone's help!

I've lost track of the times I've had to rely on backups to keep on going. Maybe I'm too much of a tinkerer, but it seems every few months I trash the OS and have to go back to a DriveImage file.

Same thing with video--I try (and often forget) to to a backup to tape of the significant pieces of my work, just in case a drive decides to go south. Last year I lost everything on a 200GB drive (15 hours of DV). Had to go back to the people who shot the miniDV footage and re-borrow their tapes. Ouch. Problem was finally traced down to an intermittent 12v Y power adapter in the PC.

It is a bit late to say this but I totallty forgot somehting that might have been the cause - Did you by any chance set the drive up as dynamic? Here is why I ask - this is from a tech site:

Also note that after you convert to a dynamic disk, local access to the dynamic disk is limited to Windows XP Professional and Windows 2000. If your disk contains multiple installations of Windows XP Professional or Windows 2000, or other Operating Systems, do not convert to a dynamic disk. The conversion operation removes partition entries for all partitions on the disk with the exception of the system and boot volumes for the current operating system.

I don't belive I set it up as dynamic. If I did it never asked me.

I just had a major HD issue last week as well, maybe someone here can help me.

I have 4 drives in my computer : 1 boot & 3 data (200, 250, 250).

Last Sunday, one of the drives started making a strange noise. It eventually stopped, and I rebooted. Upon reboot, Windows did a scan disc, at which point it started "repairing" several sectors of my hard drives. When it finally booted into Windows, approximately 70% of the files on my data drives are corrupted. They're still there, I just can open them. Not only video files, but word docs, jpgs, photoshop files, everything.

One interesting thing. The boot drive wasn't affected at all. Only the 3 large data drives.

The error messages vary depending on what program I try to open files in, but most basically say that "the file is not a supported format," even though they are .avis, .jpgs, etc.

I've tried a Windows repair installation, I've uninstalled and reinstalled all software, and nothing is working. I've pretty much decided I'm going to just recapture everything, but I thought I would ask the experts here first.....

Help?

You have Windows 2k or XP, right? Did ALL 3 of the drives get corrupted? If so that suonds really wierd. How old are the drives? Also, don't let windows scandisk unless you really really trust it. :) I always try other stuff before I scandisk (copying files, ,linux, etc).

Yeah, when you get the "file not supported" error, the file header is corrupted. So, even though it still lists .jpg and .avi, the file isn't that anymore (I belive mac & unix based systems (linux and OSX) read the headers for file info, NOT the extension).