Fitted a new 80GB HDD 'F' and activated XP pro as I could not access my old drive. As I could see old drive 'C' I run CHKDSK and when I booted from it everything was as before - I had not lost any data. However when I tried to boot from the new drive again - nothing. My computer shows 'F' drive as only 31.4GB and there is no sign of windows - in fact I am asked to format the drive. I have tried Partition Magic but that merely confirms an unformatted drive of 31.4GB. What can I do to recover the missing portion of the drive please. Thanks
I don't understand whats happened. Your OS was stored on your old drive, and you fitted a new one. You boot from the old drive to windows and what?
My OS was on old drive 'C' but I could not access this drive. I tried to boot from Windows XP Pro disk but got message 'The partition is either too full, damaged not formatted or formatted with an incompatible file system'. I bought a new HDD that I call 'F', installed OS and had it activated by MS. As I could see my old drive 'C' but could not access it I ran CHKDSK. After running I could access 'C' from new drive 'F' so I changed the boot sequence and much to my surprise I found that my old drive 'C' was undamaged and I was able to boot into OS. Great I thought! That was until I tried to access 'F' from 'C'. It was then that I found that this new drive (80GB) was shown as only 31.4GB. As I said before if I try to boot from 'F' there is no boot. As my original HDD and OS is working I am quite happy to delete everything on the new drive 'F' if only I could access it
