I need help with my hard drive in Windows XP

[army20]

Hey guys,

I've did a bad thing: my hard drive containing only data was in a machine running windows server 2003 and I've put it in a xp machine, the drive was not shown in my computer so I looked in Hard drive management to see what was wrong and a popup ask me to initialize my disk. I said yes.

Now I don't know what to do to get my data back.

-army

[Zxian]

Whatever you do, don't format the disk! (I'm sure you knew that already)

Have you tried any partition or data recovery software?

[TheFlash428]

You could possible use a Linux "live" CD, or a BartPE disk, to see if you can mount the HD and still access the files.

[army20]

I have access to all my data using OnTrack EasyRecovery Pro (thanks to net_user who talked to me about this tool) but I have to copy what I need out of the disk. I have no more space on others drive.

What I'm looking exactly is a tool to rebuild the partition table on the disk (mabye partition magic will do it). I'll like someone with experience about this issue to tell me more about it.

[jroc]

If that hard drive only had data....when you added it to the XP machine..it was like adding a new drive...you have to assign it a drive letter and activate it (actually unhide the partition)...is it shown in 'Disk Management'....is it listed as 'Active' or what?.....find Partition Magic and see if its 'hidden partition' and also if its detected during bootup.

Edited October 29, 2005 by jroc