HD Not Formated?

My first post here and hope I can find some answers. Thanks.

I have 2 HDs, 1 which has my OS (my OS drive) and the other I use as a storage drive (Storage Drive), no partitions created for either drive. I needed to re-install OS, so I backed up all my files into my storage drive and disconnected it from my computer and then went ahead and formatted my OS drive and a fresh install of Win XP Pro.

After Win XP was setup, I connected my storage drive back in. Win detects the drive but when I click on it to open it, it says the Drive was not formatted!!! I have not touched this drive after I copied my files over, and disconnected it during OS installation. Also, my storage Drive is a 200GB and it only shows 124 GB under my computers. So, I went to Device Manager, under HD, which still only shows the drive is only 124GB. I then right clicked on the drive and selected “active” (may be I shouldn’t of done this). Still can’t access the Storage Drive.

One of my friend suggested I should install Win SP 2, so I downloaded it and installed it. But, it gave me the same message of drive not formatted and shows only 124 GB under My computer. When I checked in Device Manager, it shows I have 124GB not formatted and other 60ish GB not allocated???? Did I mess up my drive by select “active” before I installed SP2?

Can anyone help me to fix this?? Or, did I lost all my files in the Storage Drive? If so, any suggestions as how I can get them back? I haven’t used this HD since and never formatted it.

Someone also suggested me to get one of those external USB HD conversion cable and connect my Storage Drive externally to a different computer. Will this work?

Thank you for helping!

 

Your information is safe on the storage drive. Making the drive active did not damage anything. The question is how to retrieve the data. Unfortunately, I don't know. Just wanted to reassure you the data is still there.

The 124/60gb thing probably has to do with BIOS not recognizing large hard drives. The information detailing the layout of your storage drive file system must of been on your OS drive and was deleted when that drive was formatted. There are ways of fixing this that are magical when they work, but for me its always been dumb luck. Hopefully, someone has a step-by-step or software recommendation.

 

Go into your control panel/Admin tools/Computer Management/Disk Management then highlight the drive you need to activate and choose 'Import Foreign Disk' and that should fix it.