Drive inaccessible after switch to AHCI

[Mamapajama]

Here's the scenario:

I had a WD 750GB HDD, split into two partitions (50GB boot, 700GB storage). I just picked up an Agility SSD and got ready to install it, when I realized that my SATA setting was in IDE mode and not AHCI. So I changed to AHCI in BIOS, but then I couldn't boot up from my HD's 50GB partition anymore--so I switched back to IDE mode, and I could boot up just fine. But then came the problem--I can't access the 700GB partition at all anymore! Not on this desktop, nor on any of the others I have here. When I click on the drive's properties, it reads 0MB used of 0MB capacity, and trying to access the drive gives me "Innaccessible drive" or some error. Is my data gone for good?? Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I'm in way over my head on this one (tried googling related terms/subjects w/ no success for the past hour)! Thanks guys.

FYI, my system is:
AMD Athlon II 620 Regor @ stock
2 x 2GB DDR800
Gigabyte MA790GP-UD4H
Win7 Ult x86

 

[thescreensavers]

You running windows 7?

http://www.ithinkdiff.com/how-to-enable-ahci-in-windows-7-rc-after-installation

 

[Mamapajama]

Hey screensavers,

Yeah, win7 Ult 32-bit. I found articles discussing enabling AHCI, similar to the link you provided--would enabling AHCI this way restore access to the 700GB partition? I unfortunately found the PROPER way to enable AHCI after the matter of fact, and my main concern right now is to regain access to that partition.

UPDATE:
So I went ahead and tried enabling AHCI as outlined in the link above--everything installed just fine, but I still cannot access the 700GB partition.

 

[C1]

Boot up using a drive/partition manager program program and inspect the 700 part status (eg, hidden, active, bootable, etc.) & make any required suitable changes.

 

[Mamapajama]

C1,

Right--I actually forgot to include that info in my original post. Under Windows' drive manager, the 700GB partition is labeled as "Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)".

 

[Mamapajama]

UPDATE: SOLVED!!!

After hours and hours of frustration, the problem's been solved!!! All credit for my solution goes to John Seymour in the following link:

http://www.lockergnome.com/windows/2004/10/28/access-denied/comment-page-1/#comment-391617

Basically, I had to jump through some loops to enable security to give me access to the drive again. After a quick reboot following John's instruction, all my data is back!! Thank you all who responded here for your help as well!

 

[C1]

The 700 part must status as non-bootable & non-hidden. I use partition manage programs that are capable of reading the status of all partitions & providing for manually changing/controlling status.

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-1489512.php

 

[Mamapajama]

C1, I tried using Easy Recovery, but everything I tried to do through that program would give me the same "access denied" message as when I tried chkdsk through command prompt and a host of other methods. After I regained ownership of the partition, all was back to normal in terms of managing partitions (makes sense, I suppose--but I would think partition managing programs should have been able to access that partition to begin with). Thanks for your help!

 

[AlucardX]

this is confusing to me, because you're talking about an entire partition, but NTFS ownership issues is at the folder/file level. the way you described your error made it sound like you couldn't see your partition at all in the OS, but if you performed take ownership that means you could see the partition but couldn't access any data within it.

 

[Mamapajama]

The partition did show up in the OS, but as some unidentified thing--it's supposed to have been labeled "Storage" but would the OS would see simply as "local disk." To be honest, I'm not 100% clear on what happened either--all I know is setting permissions/ownership (you're right, it was done at the folder level) seems to have fixed the problem.

 

[C1]

Yes. I was under the impression from the problem description that the 700 PARTITION could not be accessed. This was reinforced by the statement about not being able to BOOT from the 50GB PARTITION (ie, an either 50GB OR 700GB Partition access).

In any event, happy that the issue has been resolved.