Windows XP does not see Hard Drive Data

I have a Western Digital 160 gig drive with two FAT32 partitions (100 and 60 gig). This is not my OS drive. I have had no problem with the drive until I deleted some large backup files from one of the partitions. The next time I booted, Windows XP Pro automatically ran the Chkdsk utility. It got about 30% finished and stalled. Windows eventually started up, but without completing the scan. Windows Explorer recognizes the 2 partitions but not the data. When I access either of the partitions, Windows XP Pro tells me the partitions are not formatted.
When I boot into DOS, the data is there. The Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics does not find any errors on the drive. Also XP's "Disk Management" shows the partitions as "healthy" but with no "File System". I would welcome any suggestions on how to recover the drives so that Windows recognizes the data.

 

the big files you deleted it was from the 100 GIGS partition right ???

it's because fat32 partitions can't not be bigger to 80 GIGS to regain
your data shrunk your 100GIGS to at least 80 the best split in two to 50 GIGS
this should fix your problem here a free program for doing this....

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Partition_Logic_d4780.html

 

hmm in theory fat32 can support 8TB HDD.

zubb99 try any soft to recover data.
i had similar problem - my windows xp doesn't recognize my partition - i saw RAW file format instead of NTFS.
i used file scavenger software (you can download it for free (limited func.) and try).

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I should have mentioned that the only way I can see the data in DOS is with a ME Installation CD. I cannot see the data in WIndows DOS or while using the Repair function of XP. Repair gives the error message "An error occurred during directing enumeration". While in Repair I decided to try FIXMBR and FIXBOOT on one of the partitions. Unfortunately now I can't see the data on that partition even with the ME disc. I will download the "partition logic" program but I am reluctant to try it since I might lose that data as well. I found a DOS program "PMS" that can copy files in DOS from the bad partition to another drive but it cannot copy directories. It also copys the files in DOS format (no long file names). But with 100 gig of data it would take forever and the data would be impossible to interpret. I would welcome any other suggestions.

 

cah you see this disk in windows?
no partitions - disk
if yes
did you try file scavenger?
if yes - what are the results?
if no - try - in v 2.1 use "defnunc volume search"
i had recovered about 80 gigs of data in few hours

 

I downloaded the following data recovery demo programs. "R-Studio 3.0" ($80.00), "Scavenger" ($45.00) and "GetDataBack" ($69.00), "Test Disk" (Free) and "PC Inspector" (Free). R-Studio could not complete a full scan of the partitions. It completed about 50% of the partitions and then hung up the computer. Scavenger completed the scan with no errors but did not find all the files. As an example, using "PMS" in DOS mode, I copied 660 files (with truncated file names) but Scavenger only recovered 307 files. GetDataBack ran without errors but the program does not return the data in their normal Windows folders making it extremely difficult to make sense of the data or to determine if it even recovered all the data. The Scavenger demo only recovers a maximum of 64 bytes of the files it finds and the GetDataBack demo does not allow you to copy the recovered data (if you can make sense of it). PC Inspector did not recognize the drive. As a last resort I might try "Test Disk". It is a partition recovery program but its instructions are confusing and states that it works with Windows 98, ME and 2000, but it does not mention Windows XP. I'm afraid to try it because it says it will automatically repair a damaged MBR. Since none of the demos gave me what I expected, I do not intend to purchase any of them. Unless I can find something better, I intend to tediously copy the programs and files, as I need them, using the free DOS program "PMS". Thanks again.