After re-installing, XP is saying "Hard drive not formatted"

[thegurukid]

Hey guys, I have two hard drives, a 40 gig and 160 gig

I re-installed XP last night and I'm sure I chose the partition on the C drive (40 gig) but after the instiallation was complete, I tried to open my D drive with ALL my data on it and it says Local Disk D, not formatted.

Can someone please help me out and walk me through getting my D drive back, it has my summer project from school on it, multiple songs I've written and a ton of other very important things to me


Thanks

[sechs]

I'd suggest using some data retreival software on it before trying to revive the file system. If you try to bring back the file system and fail, you could obliterate your files.

I've had good experience with R-Studio and GetDataBack, although there are many others.

[thegurukid]

Cool, thanks a lot

I tried PCinspector and nothing came up so I re-formatted the disk so windows would read all 152 gigs

now i'm trying to recover with windows seeing all of the gigs

anymore tips on good programs (hopefully free) or techniques to use would definitely be appreciated

[sechs]

Don't make any changes to the disk, like formatting, before trying to recover. This is a sure-fire way to obliterate data.

Make an image of the drive and work from that, if possible.

Never save retreived files to the disk from which you are trying to recover.

[sr71000]

eek. tell me you didn't reformat the hard drive!! i guess you have a minimal chance of getting your data back...but let me stress...minimal if you reformatted. !! if you didn't reformat you may have to activate the disk. I'm sorry i can't tell you how to do this because i just has surgery and i can't get to my xp computer . I think (stress think) that it is start, control panel (make sure it's in the old fashioned mode), administratoin tools, computer management, storage, disk management, go to the hard drive your information is on, and right click it. (this should be disk 0 if it's your only hard drive). Make sure the disk is activated (again, it should be, considering your primary partition is on that hard drive..i think) then make sure the partition with your information on it is active and has a drive letter and stuff. see what xp tells you about your partition there. if you reformated...it's not quite so simple...your in deep crap there. Also..if you reformated i'd suggest waiting for instruction from now on instead of doing what you think sounds like it will work. I only say this because you are really in a tight spot if you reformated to one big partition. Please don't take what I say as rude, because it's not meant to be...just very blunt. Anyways...welcome to timo, if you follow our directions 100% we should still be able to get some of your information off there for you.

now..if you reformateed to one big partition, things get more difficult. I'd suggest going out and getting a new hard drive. If you want a nice big one, go for it, it you want the cheepest because you don't plan on using it..that works fine too. Take the new drive, and install windows xp to it. You want to make sure, when you start your computer, to start this installation of xp. what I'd do is this. Remove your old drive w/ all the info and put in the new one. Install xp and once your done install all your data recovery software. Next click my computer, folder options, the second tab (i forget the name), and make sure you can see all hidden and system folders. Next go back to my computer and double click c, look for your boot.ini file and it should look something like

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

change windows xp in the fourth line to good windows. (odd yes, but important)

The reason you wanna do this is because simply having xp running on the drive your files are on, you risk them being overwritten by xp. I really would suggest right now, printing this out, getting another hard drive, and installing xp on it (i'd say atleast 10 gigs will do it if you have one lying around). The more you run the computer off your current hard drive, the less likely you are to recover those files.

Let us know if you did reformat the partition or not and if you did, when your ready with another hard drive and a full install of xp.

[thegurukid]

^Thanks a lot

I found the problem, I didn't reformat the D drive when I re-installed, Windows XP was only reading 32 gigs. So I had to run my maxtor maxblast software (which reformats) for windows to read the full 152 gigs.

After that I ran R-Studio (thanks sechs), which found all of my data on the scan. I am now recovering the files.

So in conclusion, I had to reformat just to get XP to read the disk, THEN run R-Studio and recover the files. Thanks a lot for all the help sechs and sr, I seriously appreciate it.

[sr71000]

i've never heard of that before....no offence but i'd say it was something else that got patched up when you did the reformat....also..u'r very lucky to get all u'r data after a reformat, but i'm happy for ya (wish i got lucky like that once in a while)!! anyways...u'r gettin u'r data...so congrats (i'm still jellous of all u'r luck tho...lol)

[thegurukid]

Man if it isn't one thing it's another, now I have all my files back but none of the .exe works. Does anyone know how to fix this, the files are all the exact size as before I deleted them so I don't think it lost information. Even the mp3 files won't work

P.S. I used R-studio to restore them, is this a problem?


Edit: I also noticed all the restored files are read-only and I can't change it, XP gives me an error

[Theophylact]

If your Windows programs are on the D drive and the C has your operating system, registry and all, you'll have to reinstall the programs, unless you want to do a major job of editing the registry so it knows where all the relevant files are. If your setup files are on the D drive, you can just go ahead and run them; otherwise, you'll need the installation disks.

But you have all your data files saved, at least.

[thegurukid]

Yeah my setup files are on the D drive but they won't run, it goes to this MS-Dos window for like two seconds then switches off


and my MP3's won't even play, it says they are using an unkown encoding