Computer nightmare...help!

[Greg]

Ok...so I had the brain storm tonight of trying to install a dual boot of Linux on a harddrive that already had Win XP installed on it. Long story short, something didn't go right and I was not able to boot the computer at all after the attempted install of Linux.

I have two harddrives installed on my computer...a 40 GB harddrive designated as C: drive and a separate 120 GB harddrive designated as D: drive. The C: drive was where the OS was installed and the D: drive was where all of my data was kept (pictures, music, documents, etc...).

I had to reinstall Win XP on the C: drive...no problem...it installed fine and XP boots up normally. However, it is now showing that my D:drive, which has all of my data, is unformatted with nothing on it. When I reinstalled XP I selected only the C: drive to be where XP was to be installed. C: drive was reformatted before install. I did not select D:drive at all for anything to be done to it. I left D: drive alone thinking that after the OS was reinstalled on the C: drive, I should have no problem accessing it.

Is there something I missed that I still need to do in order to access the data on the D: drive (the 2nd HD)? Or have I majorly messed things up and accidentally deleted all of my data?

 

[Semper Fidelis]

That's really strange. I don't know why it would be showing your D drive unformatted.

As long as all you did was re-install Windows XP on your C: drive then the other physical device should be unaffected.

Go to Admin tools on your XP install and see if you can see the other physical device. Are you sure you didn't inadvertently create a second partition on an unformatted spot on your first physical drive. Maybe your data is on another logical drive on your system.

I would try Partition Magic or Partition Commander.

 

[Greg]

I went to Admin Tools and it is showing the 2nd hardrive as healthy but under file system it isn't showing anything, whereas the 1st harddrive is displaying NTFS. The second harddrive is also being displayed as having 100% of the disk as free space.

Are you sure you didn't inadvertently create a second partition on an unformatted spot on your first physical drive. Maybe your data is on another logical drive on your system.

I rechecked C: drive for any of the missing data and it isn't there.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

That's strange. Somehow your partition got deleted. I would go to a better tech support place than here - try anandtech.com.

I think your data is still intact but, somehow, you need to be able to stick your partition back on the disk without formatting the drive and leaving the FAT (or NTFS) in place.

 

[Greg]

I think I may have discovered what I did, Rich. I was looking at the harddrives again through Admin Tools and it is currently showing both hardrives as being the primary partition. If they were both designated as the primary partition prior to reinstalling XP (I'm not sure, I'm assuming this maybe the case), it probably reformatted both harddrives when I selected to reinstall XP on the one primary partition. Does this seem like what probably happened?

 

[Semper Fidelis]

That seems unlikely. If it had then it would have formatted the partition. If it's free space then the partition has been removed but not necessarily re-formatted. Odds are that your data is still on that other drive.

 

[Greg]

That seems unlikely. If it had then it would have formatted the partition.

That makes sense.

If it's free space then the partition has been removed but not necessarily re-formatted. Odds are that your data is still on that other drive.

I hope so. I'll check out that website that you recommended earlier. Thanks for your help Rich.