Hard drive Nightmare.

Hello all:

Scenerio:

1. Recieved a doner machine from a family member.

Hard drive Partitions:
1 Dell restore small (3 gig or so)
2 XP Home edition NTFS (40 gig)

2. Hard drive failing (odd whirling noises made by drive)

Goal: Rebuild Machine to a reusable state.

Problem:
1. Both partitions were deleted.
2. XP pro created and formated the above listed hard drive in the below listed steps.
****a. Booted XP pro CD Deleted above partitions - rebooted.
****b. Booted XP Pro CD and created and formated above drive to max capacity.
****c. Continued the install to the point of asking for admin password.

3. Here's the OOPS folks. I need files of the original #2 partition.

Possable solutions?
I have the latest version of partition magic and ghost don't don't know if I can get this done with these tools? Any one have any ideas?


PS: I know my outlook is grim to begin with.

 

First of all, if you have a failing hard drive its better to get it replaced and start clean.

You probably cant get the files back from the Dell partition, and its best you dont get it back. You can use your XP cd to do Repair installs in case something goes wrong.

Also you can enable System Restore.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/getstarted/ballew_03may19.mspx

 

format = wipe all data from the drive. ie anything you had is now gone!

Best now to do as blades suggested and replace the HDD if you suspect its on its last legs, and start from square one with a clean install of XP!

Regards....