I decided to upgrade my mobo, cpu and get a SATA hard drive recently and after a little phaffing about I have a working machine. However my main problem is my old ide hard drive. It was my main drive, working fine and I was going to use it as a 2nd drive but I cannot access it. It seems to think it is a FAT12 drive and limited to 12Gb where as it was my main drive, unpartitioned and is 160Gb. I have tried an external drive bay, putting it into my remains of my old computers as a 2nd drive and nothing. I have probably lost everything (all my itunes, don't mention backup no one ever does when its working ok) but it has not been formatted so I live in hope. Anyone know of a cure or software I could try? Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks, Garyb

"don't mention backup no one ever does when its working ok". Perhaps you don't, but most people I know backup regularly. What type of drive is the old one? Was the partition formatted NTFS? What's the physical connection? What does Disk Management show? What's the file system of the new drive? "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

It was FAT32 with no partitions originally but as I mentioned it now thinks it is formatted in FAT12 with a 10Gb partition. You can 'see' it is 160Gb in size via Computer Management but that is about it. The other drive in my older PC is also an IDE & formatted to NTFS. I also have an external IDE drive bay so I can either connect via the USB port or by using it as a slave in the old computer. As for backing up, it was kind of the point in buying a bigger drive so I could use my old one as a backup. Thanks for your reply, Garyb

"It seems to think it is a FAT12 drive and limited to 12Gb where as it was my main drive, unpartitioned and is 160Gb". The above statement is confusing. You state it was unpartitioned yet you are looking for files on it? Is the External enclosure an old one? Older enclosures were not 48 bit LBA compatible. If you have the drive installed in a 28 bit LBA enclosure you may get some strange readings. When you had the drive connected internally it showed as a 160GB drive. What was the other information in Disk Management for that drive? You may simply need to take ownership of the files/folders.

It is a new external IDE drive bay, bought last week (Akasa P2 3.5'' USB IDE External Enclosure) The drive did read as 160 GB and was my main drive with Windows installed and general programs. Windows was not installed on a partition and so yes I am looking the files on my main drive, but I cannot access them because it seems to think it is in FAT12. I can see a 10Gb partition (FAT12 only goes to a maximum of 12Gb I believe)and the remaining 150Gb is shown in Disk management but I cannot access or explore it. If I do click on it through My Computer it just lists it as a 10Gb drive. Thanks, Garyb

"and after a little phaffing about I have a working machine". Please explain this statement. What problems did you have and what did you do to solve them. When in Disk Management you can see the 160GB but 10GB is FAT12. What does Disk Management say about the 150GB?

Installing SATA drives from a boot disc before installing windows that sort of phaffing about. This statement relates to my new mobo, memory, cpu & sata drive and not to my ide drive problem. This will be an external drive from now on but is installed in the remains of my older computers which is running XP on another IDE hard drive. I think it says unallocated against the remaining 150Gb (I'm at work, but if it says anything different I will repost it here) About the only thing it gives me the option of doing is formatting but, as mentioned earlier, it was a working drive with XP installed with about 30Gb of free space.