BleepingComputer.com: my second hard Drive crashed, can't login to computer

Hi,

I have 2 big problems. The first problem is that my F drive (my second hard drive) crashed on me. I turned on the computer a few days ago and the black start up screen said the primary drive was missing. I have a link to it on my desktop, and when the computer finished loading, the link had a red question mark on the icon. I clicked on it, and at first I saw the usual folders. When I clicked on the folders, the computer hung, and a yellow exclamation point came up saying that folder F:Music failed...Folder F: Photos failed...Data on F failed.

That was a big enough problem. Then came problem number two.

I tried to see on my own if something changed in the boot settings or set up log. After fussing with it a few times and restarting the computer, I began to get a blue XP user login screen for a password. The problem is, I do not have a password! It's my home computer, so I never made one. In safe mode, it asks for administrator password, which is a password that also doesn't exist. Is there a way I can fix this and salvage the data on both hard drives?

Have you tried leaving the password blank and just pressing ENTER?

A lot of pre-built machines have blank Administrator passwords. If you can see that account, its more than likely logged into safe mode anyway.

There are possible hardware issues that can stop a hard drive appearing to work, one of them is faulty memory.

If you have access to another PC, try plugging the drive into that one and see if its recognises it. If it does, then the hardware on your machine is faulty. If it doesn't - the drive is faulty.

If the drive is faulty but it does acknowledge it and assigns a drive letter, try START > RUN > CMD followed by CHKDSK /R at the command prompt. If your on Vista, just click START and type CMD in the white box above the start button logo.

Hope this helps

Budapest, on Nov 2 2009, 06:30 PM, said:

yes. I get a "password incorrect" error.

cotesy, on Nov 2 2009, 07:04 PM, said:

I do have a laptop I'm using. How do I plug in an internal desktop hard drive into a laptop so I can see if it works?

pthalo4ms, on Nov 3 2009, 12:14 AM, said:

If the Administrator password has been set and you don't know it, then the only way to access the data is by mounting the drive in another PC.

cotesy, on Nov 2 2009, 07:18 PM, said:

how do i do this, and can i do it with a laptop?

You could try this to get to your data:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vis...ndows-computer/

The Ubuntu way is one method but not for the novice. Any linux system can read a windows drive with normal security.

The only way to mount a desktop drive on a laptop is with some kind of adaptor or external hard drive caddy for a 3.5" drive. Depending if the drive is IDE or SATA.

Another nice gadget is called Magic Bridge II - this device can plug any hard drive, 2.5" or 3.5" SATA or IDE or any combination into any machine using USB or ESata connections.

I dont know how easy it is to get hold of in your area but I bought one of these from a local computer store a month or so ago now and it definately does what it says on the box. You will just have to Google it and see what comes up. Its readily available here in the UK.

cotesy, on Nov 3 2009, 05:44 PM, said:

thanks for the info. my F Drive is SATA.

cotesy, on Nov 3 2009, 05:44 PM, said:

hi, I got an external hard drive caddy today, but the instructions concern me. according to the instructions it says "please notice! before you run fdisk, it will erase all your data from external HDD," which is obviously the last thing I want to do.

Fdisk will wipe the Hard Drive but you will not need to run this for what you are doing.
Simply put your drive into the Caddy and plug it in. Windows will acknowledge the new drive and your data will be available. You just need to know where to look on the drive for your files.

Here's an update. I hooked up my old C drive to the external drive and got all the necessary files off of it with no problems (thanks for the help on that). The F drive, which was the one that wasn't detected on the old computer, still poses problems. When I plugged it into the external drive, it sounds great. The drive purrs like a kitten. When I start up my laptop, the laptop detects it as it should. The problem is, even though my laptop says that the device is working and detects what kind of device it is, there no way to access the drive itself. When I click on "My Computer" there is no E Drive icon for the drive, as there was for the previous drive.

FYI, the drive is a Western Digital 4000kd. I couldn't find any designations for slaving the drive, so there are no jumpers in it.

Does the drive show up in Disk Management?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309000

This is what I see in Disk Management:


The box for the external drive says "Dynamic" and "Foreign" and there are no details about it in the box. When I click on properties, it correctly indicates that it is a WD 40000KD drive, and that the device is working properly, but it says that its capacity is 0 MB.