URGENT HELP REQUIRED - Saving HDD after Reinstallation of XP

Software & Apps
#1

G’day all gurus :bow: ,
Need some help. I’ve just reinstalled XP on my 80GB HDD (NTFS format). This has worked with no problems. However…

I have a 200GB HDD with all my photos/music etc which was working fine prior to reinstalling XP.

Problem now is that although I can see the 200GB HDD in Windows Explorer, when I go to open it XP says “Disk is not formatted. Click OK to format”

Obviously I don’t want to format it and loose all of my data!! I’ve checked the Disk Management tool and the 200GB HDD has ‘Basic’ formatting whilst XP as per normal has ‘NTFS’ formatting.

If anyone knows how to go about viewing my data on the 200GB HDD without formatting it would be a fantastic help

Cheers from Down Under
Spud1977

#2

Hi :slight_smile:
Welcome to the forum spud1977. :iagree: :clap:
You need a program like Partition Magic. This will allow you to change format of drive to NTFS without the loss of data. See here.
I don’t know if there are any free programs that will help. But maybe someone will chip in.

#3

Yeah, but the question is, “What happened?”. It was working before.

If you don’t have service pack 2 (or is it 1?) installed, you can’t access a disk greater then 137 GB. If that’s the case, you need to install the service pack.

Otherwise, I don’t know the problem. Hard drive manufacturers sometimes give you a CD with some software that messes with drivers of something, that allows older OSs to access these big disks. If you installed that before, maybe you need to install it again.

#4

Try to access the hard disk with this utility:
Zero Assumption Recovery

#5

Do you have jumpers set correctly for the 2 drives? The 80 GB boot drive should have jumper set for Master, and the 200 GB should have jumper set to Slave.

#6

Like bevills1 said, you should be able to access your HDD fine if you have your Master & Slave drives set correctly. Windows should show your drive when you boot back up on your 80GB HDD. If it shows it as unformatted then most likely your drive has corruption/damaged index/damaged tables/damaged partitions. The only way to fix the problem is:

  1. Fix the damaged index/table/partitions
  2. Retrieve the data with software
  3. Reformat the HDD (you would lose your data)
    Otherwise your HDD is damaged beyond repairs. I always keep an external usb/firewire case around because sometimes, you never know when it will help you recover your files. You could possibly recover your HDD files with an external case or you can try software. Get Data Back NTFS/FAT Free trial Of course software is not free but sometimes it works to recover your files. I have recovered one of my friend’s data files with this software before due to damaged indexes and partitions. And like Steve said, make sure you have Windows XP Service Pack 2 installed, SP2 has support for breaking the 137GB barrier on HDD. Otherwise your drive may show up as unformatted.
#7

Is your 200 gig HD an external unit and was it connected to your computer when you formatted the 80 gig.

#8

The 137GB issue sounds possible, have you applied SP2 (if the Windows disk is not already SP2) and any relevant chipset / IDE drivers ?