Just wanted to reinstall Windows yesterday. I have two HD's, one for OS (C: ) and another one with two partitions for data/games.
So I rebooted with the WinXP CD and clicked me through to the screen where you get to choose the destination drive for the install. So I tried formatting my C: and it went all the way up to 100% and then broke up saying "the drive can't be formatted". I rebooted and tried again and got to the same screen. There, XP saw my C: again, but my data drive was there as "non-partitioned area". That totally freaked me out since I did nothing with the second drive! I broke up and rebooted again into windows and indeed, the data drive was GONE!
I started partition magic in order to see what happened and it also saw the drive as non-partitioned area. Trying the "Restore partitions" option got me a message box saying "No partitions found".
Does anyone know of a nice tool for restoring data from a f*#<x0red drive? I'd appreciate any help!
Another strange thing: when I disconect the mentioned drive and try to boot, it gets to the BIOS startup screen saying "detecting IDE drives..." and stops there. I have all my drives set to "Auto" in BIOS. I also tried fiddling around with enabling/disabling individual drives, but I could not get the machine to boot with only one HD connected until I explicitly disabled the second HD (in this case primary slave). Any ideas?
So I rebooted with the WinXP CD and clicked me through to the screen where you get to choose the destination drive for the install. So I tried formatting my C: and it went all the way up to 100% and then broke up saying "the drive can't be formatted". I rebooted and tried again and got to the same screen. There, XP saw my C: again, but my data drive was there as "non-partitioned area". That totally freaked me out since I did nothing with the second drive! I broke up and rebooted again into windows and indeed, the data drive was GONE!
I started partition magic in order to see what happened and it also saw the drive as non-partitioned area. Trying the "Restore partitions" option got me a message box saying "No partitions found".
Does anyone know of a nice tool for restoring data from a f*#<x0red drive? I'd appreciate any help!
Another strange thing: when I disconect the mentioned drive and try to boot, it gets to the BIOS startup screen saying "detecting IDE drives..." and stops there. I have all my drives set to "Auto" in BIOS. I also tried fiddling around with enabling/disabling individual drives, but I could not get the machine to boot with only one HD connected until I explicitly disabled the second HD (in this case primary slave). Any ideas?