Win XP External HD Dismounted By Chk Dsk. - Cannot See Content Any More

Question

Related to the post in: Is it possible to mount/unmount a physical hard drive in Windows XP?

Chkdsk may run if this volume is dismounted first. ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID. Would you like to force a dismount on this volume? (Y/N) y

Unfortunately I have put in y for the option in case of my External HD, and restarted the laptop (Win XP, SP3).

Next time onwards it's showing me the drive, not not able to view it's content!

Please help on how to fix this problem ? How can I remount my External HD drive (H:) so that I can view all it's content again ?

If I place the command: mountvol H: \?\Volume{858c027c-fd7e-11df-91a3-0026c6c829b6}\ then it says directory is not empty. is it because ChkDisk is still running on that hard disc drive ?

Please recommend what do I do now ?

Thanks, Somnath (happy.som@gmail.com)

Answer 1

Go to My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management -> right click your partition (is it there?) -> Change Drive Letter and Paths -> Add

Answer 2

kubanczyk is on the right track, but...

To do a full check disk, windows needs to dismount the drive. Typically once the check disk is complete it will auto mount the drive. You probably rebooted before it mounted the drive. So the steps to get it remounted should look like this.

Go to My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management -> right click where it states "Disk x" (where x is the drive thats dismounted) and select mount or online depending on your options. Typically disk 0 is your boot drive and the other disks will be listed as disk 1, 2, etc. If you don't see any disks except disk 0, then it might not have found the drive. In that case, go to the actions menu and select "rescan disks". Then follow the above instuctions.

After the disk mounts, it should have what drive letter that used to exist. if it doesn't, follow kubanczyk instuctions.