Recovering data from a large SATA after XP reinstall

[Kirk Dudley]

Here's my problem:
I had prety much managed to kill XP, and needed to wipe and reinstall. I got
a 400GB WD SATA drive, plugged it in with no problem, and backed up all of
my data to it.
I then unplugged it during the reinstall of XP to keep it out of harms way,
and then plugged it in once XP was up and running. However, This was the
original release of XP, and I failed to get all of the service packs on
before plugging the disk back in, so it only showed 128GB of the 369GB that
should be there. And it claims the drive isn't formatted.

I shut down, unplugged the disk again, ran all of the updates, (SP2, etc.),
and tried again. Still no data, and still only 128GB showing, and windows
still wants to format the drive.

How can I ether
A: Get to the data on it so I can move it somewhere else, and then
work on the drive problem,
or
B: Save the original partition and data info on the drive so XP can
use it?

TIA for any help.

 

[DL]

I have a similar prob, except I have a fully functional sys with 160gb win
drives. A 200gb drive attached to Sil sata port is seen as 186gb (ok) but
sys wont boot, attached to a nForce sata port sys boots but seen win as
128gb

 

[Dick Cardy]

Here's my problem:
I had prety much managed to kill XP, and needed to wipe and reinstall. I got
a 400GB WD SATA drive, plugged it in with no problem, and backed up all of
my data to it.
I then unplugged it during the reinstall of XP to keep it out of harms way,
and then plugged it in once XP was up and running. However, This was the
original release of XP, and I failed to get all of the service packs on
before plugging the disk back in, so it only showed 128GB of the 369GB that
should be there. And it claims the drive isn't formatted.

I shut down, unplugged the disk again, ran all of the updates, (SP2, etc.),
and tried again. Still no data, and still only 128GB showing, and windows
still wants to format the drive.

Hopefully you have installed the motherboard SATA driver?

 

[DL]

Yup

Hopefully you have installed the motherboard SATA driver?

 

[DL]

PS I'm not trying to boot/instal win on this sata drive

 

[Kirk Dudley]

Hopefully you have installed the motherboard SATA driver?

Yep, the SATA driver is there. I know that if I killed the current
partitions, recreated one big one, and formatted it, it would be available.
Only problem is, all the data on it would go away.

I scanned it with a demo version of a file recovery program, and all of the
data and room is there, but I don't have 200+ GB to transfer the data to
readily available.

 

[Kirk Dudley]

If this can be of use to anyone in the future:

Per MS Support, there is no way for XP to save the partition information and
data at this point.

The demo version of the data recovery product at http://www.easeus.com/ has
found all of the files on the messed up hard drive. I've purchused the full
version, and am running it now. Do note that you will need currently
accessable free space on your system equal to the size of the files you are
trying to recover - in other words, if you had 350GB lost on the drive, you
will need 350GB of free space outside of the messed up drive to copy the
data to. This will not magically "fix" the lost partition information.

If someone knows of a tool that can recover the partition information
without needing to copy the recovered data to someplace else, please let all
of us know.

 

[DL]

I cured my problem by reinstalling chipset drivers, presumably something
wasnt quite right with origonal installation.

 

[coal_brona]

Hi,


The data can be accidentally erased or corrupted. Anyway, in your case
I suppose trying mighty data recovery tool to see what can be brought
back. Imho the most powerful of these utils are Active@ Undelete and
Uneraser (DOS). They never failed me before and I'm pretty sure it will
be able to help you, as it did for me in a simmilar situation.

http://www.active-undelete.com/

http://www.uneraser.com/

 

[Stan Shankman]

Kirk,

When you first plugged you drive into the newly reloaded Windows XP box did
it automatically take off and run *chkdsk* ?

- Stan Shankman