Hello,

I think I've got a dead hard drive in one computer. The bios boot-up still shows the drive, but I can't find my D: drive in "My Computer" after I boot up. If the drive is dead or dying I'm ok with that. I would just like to try and get a few things off the drive if possible. I saw somewhere to try and put the drive in the freezer and somebody else recomended a linux boot disc (but I can't remember the name of the program/disc).

Second, on a different computer windows keeps telling me I'm running low on disc space. The drive is my primary drive and it is 80 GB total. I moved non-systems files like space hogs audio and video to the secondary HDD. A few days later same message again. I looked for hidden folders/files I could delete and found a few folders called "/temp" and deleted those, although not much space freed up. Next, I downloaded a program called "WinDirStat". It shows 74.5 GB totl disc space and 60.2 GB "unknown". I first thought that the "unknown" space was system restore points that had somehow gotten lost in the shuffle or something. I tried looking for System Restore to delete all but the most recent restore points. I can't find System Restore anywhere in Windows. It should have it's own tab under "System Properties", correct?

Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated. I'm sorry If I posted this in the wrong forum. Please let me know if this is the case and I will go elsewhere.

Thank You,

Bryan

HI to PCHF with the first drive is it showing up under diskmanagment in the administrative tool in the control panel? depending on what is wrong with the drive the frezzer trick could work is the drive spinning up ok?

The second answer if you go to all programs> accessories> sytem tools> System restore is it there?

On the first issue, it is not showing up under disk management. I'm not sure if the drive is spinning ok or not. Just before it disappeared it was making loud noises if that helps any. In hindsight I guess I should've seen that as a warning sign to go ahead and back up anything important.

On the other computer, System Restore is there under Programs>Accessories>System Tools but when I click on it nothing happens other than the start menu going back into hiding.

Give this a shot with the system restore problem.

Reinstalling System Restore

1. Click Start, Run and type %Windir%\INF
2. Locate the SR.INF file. If you have configured Windows Explorer to hide known file extensions, the file may show up as SR. To see the file extensions for all file types, then try this:

• On the Tools menu in My Computer, click Folder Options.
• Click the View tab.
• Clear the Hide extensions for known file types check box.

1. Right-click the SR.INF file, and then click Install
2. Windows will now attempt to reinstall System Restore, and may prompt you for the Windows installation source path. Point to %Windir%\ServicePackFiles folder, or insert your slipstreamed Windows XP (matching the Service Pack level of your system.)
3. System Restore core files will be reinstalled. Restart Windows when prompted.

with the hard drive problem I guess you have nothing to loose and freezing it shouldn't make the drive any worse put it in a zip lock bag before freezing and squeeze out as much of the air as you can put in for around an hour the remove from zip lock bag quickly plug in to PC boot up see if you can access it. If you can be quick!

MaddMatt,

Thanks for the help with my drive space issue. I followed your steps and was finally able to bring System Restore back up. I ran disk cleanup and it didn't help much. Then I opened System Restore and closed it back then ran Disk Cleanup again with an option for "System Restore: Obsolete Data Stores" in there with a number of Seventy four thousand something next to it. So I cleaned that and now I've just reclaimed 60.2 GB of drive space thanks to you. I still don't know how this happened in the 1rst place. Thank you very much. I'm a little nervous about the whole freezer thing. I think I'll try that tomorrow sometime while I have a little more time as a last resort. I just thought that since the bios was seeing the drive at boot up that I might be able to find a way to get to the drive with software. I used to love taking my computer apart, but not so much any more as I've gotten older. Not old just older.


Thanks again,

Bryan

Thats great one problem solved! you will be able to access the drive an recover the data with this >> http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm it is a great recovery tool. If the drive spins and is seen in the bios software recovery is the best option