Urgent Help Needed Guys

[Howard]

I've reinstalled Windows, but oh bollocks that seems to have been a mistake

I can no longer access my secondary hard drive!! 160GB Maxtor. It's not showing up in My Computer, and in Disc Management it's saying there's just 152GB of UNALLOCATED SPACE!! I'm being told I need to rewrite the partition table or something, but I URGENTLY NEED MY DATA BACK!! HELP GUYS!!! I'M COUNTING ON YOU!!!!1

[Steve]

That's not good is it.

I would say use Partition magic to see if there's any hidden partitions, but disk manager would show them as "unknown partition."

There are lots of recovery tools out there too, but I haven't found a free one yet.

[Howard]

ARGHH!! I can't do ANYTHING on that PC until I can access that drive! No internet or nothing!! All my nForce drivers, etc, are on the D drive!!

[Steve]

Did you accidentally delete the partition on that drive during setup?

As long as you've done nothing to the drive it should be easy enough to get a program that'll resurrent the partition table.

[Howard]

NO I haven't done anything :cry:

I noticed in setup it said unallocated space too but I just thought that was a quirk!!

I'm about to try a program and see if it works... ARGH.

[megatron]

Try using it as a master drive, but obviously do not format the data partition. It sounds like u have only one partition on that 160Gb. If u get a chance to install "leave file system intact".

[Howard]

I'm trying a piece of software that looks like it will be able to help. It's "Scanning for deleted partitions" now. Fingers crossed!!!!

[Stringent]

Have you tried importing it? R/click mycomp, -> Manage -> Disk Management, right click the drive and then import.

[Howard]

There wasn't an import option as far as I can remember?


OH BOLLOCKS

I've just noticed that to save detected partition information to the disc with this software I'inm trying it needs to be frigging well purchased!!! :'( ARGH WHY DO COMPUTERS HATE ME

[--- Z ---]

Have you installed the service packs????

XP wont recognise drives over 120GB without the service packs installed.

Try that.

--- Z ---

[megatron]

Use ur mobo cd for Nforce drivers to start.

[Spud1]

try the tools available from the recovery console (boot off the XP CD to get to them) - search the MS knowledgebase to find out what they do

[Angus]

have you got another pc to try it in?

not really experienced in this sort of thing but might be worth a try?

hope you get it sorted.

[blockers]

This has happened a couple of times to me when installing windows on another harddrive in the same computer. i dont know anything that will help. maybe go into DOS and see if you can copy the fiels onto the new hard drive? i did think of that last time it happened, but i forgot and formatted, luckily didnt lose too much work...

[Korky]

omg i know the perfect free tool for this, took me days of googling to find it, ill try and dig it out for u...

[megatron]

Makes u wearly of buying a bigger hard drive!