Here is the scenario.

Currently I work on windows xp with a couple hard drives. One 250GB, one 500GB.

I got a new hard drive today to install a fresh copy of windows on.

During setup I noticed that my old drives are showing up as 127GB and 145GB. I thought 
it was odd, but went ahead and partitioned and formatted the new drive. I stepped 
away for a minute while the format took place, and when I came back, setup had already 
started. Again, that was odd because normally it will ask which partition I wanted 
to install windows to.

Now that I'm into windows my old drives are showing up as 127 and 145GB with NOTHING 
ON THEM.

For some reason windows wants to error check these old drives and it starts moving 
files as if they exist, but aren't visible.

Any ideas on what I should do next? Should I let the error check do it's thing and 
cross my fingers?

I've got my stuff backed up, so I'm not too worried, but I wanted those drives to 
be around still! 


Disk management shows:
C: NTFS 127.99GB
F: NTFS 39.06GB
G: NTFS 128.00GB
H: NTFS 193.82GB


C: should be around 320GB
F: is about right
G: should be 250GB
H: should be 500GB


Even if the error checking thing will re-index all my files so they're visible, I'm 
not sure if I need to expand the partition first? Do I need partition magic or something 
to avoid data loss?

Tip: Run a free scan for common Windows errors ad

re: Win XP gurus please help! Old hard drives empty after fresh install? Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 10:06 pm Posted by C K (6910 messages posted) Does the install disc that you are using have at least SP1 incorporated into it? If not, you have corrputed your disks due to 48 bit LBA not being enabled in the original release version of XP. At this point, you can apply at least SP1 or higher and see if the partitions/drives will be properly recognized, but experience tells me that you will now need recovery software in the worst case scenerio. STOP using the disks now if you want any chance of recovering your data. IME, some of it will be gone. If you do not have a disc that has at least SP1, you should slipstream SP2 into a new install disc, if you have a Genuine MS install disc and not a manufacturers recovery/reinstallation disc. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Win XP gurus please help! Old hard drives empty after fresh install? Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 10:09 pm Posted by geek9pm (286 messages posted) First things first. Bad new first. Either you have a very old BIOS in your computer or you are using an old version of XP. This problem shows up on older versions of windows taht are not up to date. And in some cases the problem is even in the BIOS of the computer. Until you fix that problem, any formatting and installation you do on partitions over 128GB (read 137GB) will be unpredictable. Now the Good News. Just update to SP2 and run simple utility before you crate any partitions above the 127GB mark. This problem is called the "48bit LBA" issue. It is now history if you are using SP2 or better. see http://www.48bitlba.com/ Geek9pm [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Win XP gurus please help! Old hard drives empty after fresh install? Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 6:20 am Posted by C K (6910 messages posted) Did you check 48bitlba.com? I'm getting an infected web page warning from the AV on it, then it hangs the browser. Never had that problem before on that site, and not having issues with any of my other sites either. Either infected or coding issue I suspect. That's why I didn't point him there last night, till I see what's going on.. Error I am getting (suspected pattern): HTML/Infected.WebPage.Gen Supposed to be a trojan (malware) [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Win XP gurus please help! Old hard drives empty after fresh install? Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 7:11 am Posted by Loud (1 messages posted) Hi geek9pm, When you say "run simple utility" is there a particular utility to run before I adjust the partitions? I will upgrade to SP2 tonight, but I'm not sure what the best plan of action is to give me the best chance to recover my data. Should I use partition magic to expand the partition, and then somehow repair my hard drive's index / table to get my file structure back? [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Win XP gurus please help! Old hard drives empty after fresh install? Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 7:13 am Posted by geek9pm (286 messages posted) Not seeing that here: But there are alternatives: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098 http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa/sb/cs-009299.htm http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013 Geek9pm [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Win XP gurus please help! Old hard drives empty after fresh install? Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 7:25 am Posted by geek9pm (286 messages posted) To put it simply, the error can be both in the BIOS and XP. It is a know issue in XP SP-1. You will need to review the information published by Microsoft and others. Any disk write operations may cause damage to some data. Some read operations above the 127GB line will be corrupt. The system may become unstable at any time. This is a low-level code problem and does NOT bring up error messages until after the damage is done. I just gave some links to CK above. Please look above this post for the links to the Microsoft site. Geek9pm [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Win XP gurus please help! Old hard drives empty after fresh install? Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 9:23 am Posted by C K (6910 messages posted) XP original release didn't have 48 bit LBA enabled. SP1 on did. W2K with SP3 and higher added support AFTER the system was installed and you did the reg entry. You could also make a W2K install CD with the 48 bit LBA enabled if you wanted to, so that large drives could be supported at the time of install, but natively, the installer would not enable 48 bit no matter the SP. (MS had no intention of making that change to the installer in Sp3 and up for some odd reason) There is a guy who created the updated installer for W2K if you didn't have the patience or knowledge to do it yourself.. I have a W2K install CD that has the updates, so I can install W2K on a large drive without going through the issue of changing the registry and then using Partition Magic to expand the partitions and the logical drives. :-) [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Win XP gurus please help! Old hard drives empty after fresh install? Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 9:31 am Posted by C K (6910 messages posted) The utility Geek posted is for Intel chipsets only. If you don't have one of the supported chipsets, then don't use it.. Partition Magic will not run if there are errors or corruption on the drive at this point, and you shouldn't atttempt to do anything with the drive, until you install SP1 or SP2 to enable 48 bit LBA. If the drive hasn't not been corrupted, then installing the SP should enable the LBA and you should then get your original drive specs back, along with your data IME (in my experience). If you don't and your BIOS is fully capable of 48 bit LBA, which it sounds like it did if it worked before, then you will probably need recovery software to recover your data. I use one from here with the best results, and sometimes it can repair the file system and the partitions: www.atl-datarecovery.com There are free ones around and they have gotten better, but it can be hit and miss with them IME. First try to install SP2 and see what happens. If that doesn't work, then you have bigger problems. [Reply or follow-up to this message] Tip: Use one of the [Reply or follow-up to this message] links above to add a message to this thread Search this forum Start a new thread on a different subject Report abuse of the forum Return to the Windows XP Discussion Forum