Help me to see my partially formatted HD

Discussion in 'Software' started by cardr01, Nov 14, 2008.

  1. cardr01

    cardr01 Private E-2

    Ok I screwed up last night and need some help! Long story short I put a new HD in my Dell to reinstall XP. Old HD is filled up. I put both HD's in together and booted to the CD. Even though I set up the old HD as slave it still read as C: I didn't see this until it was to late. The new drive was labeled F: I started a format of what I thought was the new drive when it ended up being the old! The ticker got to 2%. I stopped the formatting and unplugged the old HD to install XP on the new drive. When I got everything up and running I can not see any data from the old drive. I had 3 partitions. C, D, and E. I can only see the old HD as F. If I try to access it XP askes me to format it. I'm assuming I damaged the MBR, and possibly the partition table. What's the best way to fix the old HD so I can see the partitions to get all my data off of it? Any help/advise would be much appreciated!

    Thanks
     
  2. Senlis

    Senlis Staff Sergeant

    As far as I know, there is no way to "fix" the hard drive as it needs a new filesystem and doing so means formatting. You may be able to recover files off of it by using

    http://majorgeeks.com/Undelete_Plus_d5301.html

    good luck.
     
  3. sach2

    sach2 Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Try a trial version of GetDataBack to determine if the data is still there. It won't let you recover the files but will show you what is available, safely.

    TestDisk is free but rather complicated. If GDBack can see your files then it may be worth reading up on TestDisk to see if it can help you out.

    *********
    Just for my info, your computer is set up with two CD/DVD Roms? Just checking that you are reading your drive info correctly. Your new set up is C:=Windows D:+E:=CDROM and F=unpartitoned old drive.
     
  4. cardr01

    cardr01 Private E-2

    Yes that's correct. 2 CD-Roms.

    Thanks for the replies I'll try those programs.
     
  5. cardr01

    cardr01 Private E-2

    Still need some help. I used Get data back and recovered some of my data. I still need to get my outlook .pst file back, and all my mp3's. Nothing has been written to this drive so I assume it's all still there. Does anyone have any other suggestions to searching and finding these other files?

    Thanks
     
  6. plodr

    plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member

    A linux live CD might be able to mount the drive, see the partitions and allow you to move the files elsewhere, like to an external USB drive.
    Try Knoppix because it will probably boot on most hardware.
    http://knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html
    pick a mirror near your location, download it and burn the ISO to a CD. (I assume you know that burning an ISO is different from burning a data CD). If you have never burned an ISO, post back and state what burning software you ordinarily use.
     

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