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reinstalled XP cant see old secondary drive ???


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Posted

Hi all

A mate of mine decided to reinstall XP on his 2 drive system (C, D) - XP on C, other data on D

(dont ask why, his idea, not mine :))

Once the re-installation was complete, the new installation could not see the data on his old second drive (D) - it can see the drive OK, but reports it as unformatted

secondary drive is only 60Gb, doesn't need drivers, and no special bios patches

Anyone have any other ideas?? All welcome as he's keen to get his data back

muff

Guest cpt_andy
Posted

Does disk management report any partitions on the drive? They may be hidden. Try using Partition Magic, it can recover partitions (I think - I havn't used it in a while).

Cpt. Andy

Guest cthulhu
Posted

Can XP see FAT32 formatted drives ? It may be thinking it's an NTFS partition and not seeing the data.

Guest cpt_andy
Posted

XP should happily see FAT(32) partitions and assign them a drive letter, as with NTFS ones.

Saying that, if the partition is visible to Windows, maybe it just needs a drive letter assigning to it (can be done in disk management).

Cpt. Andy

Guest siu99spj
Posted

Maybe Windows XP trounced the drive. Doesn't happen very often, but occaisonally Windows gets a little eager and one trounced drive later...

You could try a partition recovery tool and see if that can recover the data. Most can do a reasonable job EVEN if the drive has been repartitioned and (Quick) formatted.

Guest fraser
Posted

Well, sounds like a PEBKAC problem to me...did he delete the partitions on all drives perhaps?

Posted

turns out that he thinks he accidentally fdisk'd the wrong drive when doing the reinstallation (dont ask how, I have no idea - I wasn't present when he did it :))

he's found a recovery tool now and got it all back now though :o

thanks for all the suggestions folks,

muff

Posted

fdisk! lol, the words "wild goose chase" come to mind! :)

Guest fraser
Posted

Told ya!! 8) Reinstalling an OS is always tricky, I've done it a thousand times, and the trick is to treat each one as the first time you've done it. Stop and think about every step when it comes to the destructive phase. If in doubt over which drive is which, shut down and disconnect the data drive for the install.

Good job on fixing it though...mental note made that it's possible to do that. Hopefully I won't need it!!

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