What happens when you initialize a drive with partitions/data on i

[Guest]

The partitions of one of my HDs didn't show up when I rebooted my pc (after
explorer.exe had used all of my CPU power for 12 hours without any
filetransactions. hmmm).

I managed to recover the partitions with a nice little DOS tool I ran from a
bootable floppy. The tool created a new MBR and saved it to the disk.

If I boot up in the recovery console I can access the partitions and see the
folders and files. (not safe mode or something else, but the recovery console
you get by running "winnt32.exe /cmdcons"

But when I boot into the normal WinXP, the drives aren't accessible because
the disk initialization hasn't been recreated.

I haven't tried to initialize a disk with data on it before, so can someone
please confirm that nothing will happen to my partitions and my data when I
initialize the disk?

Please don't quote Windows Help, WinXP resource kit chapter 12 or other
basic stuff.

My problem is that I can't find out what these sources mean when they use
the word 'new'.

Does 'initializing a new disk' mean initializing
1) a blank, empty disk, or
2) a disk which is new to the specific WinXP-system (As we know WinXP
monitors hardware changes, so we have to re-activate now and then) ???

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Initializing a disk means creating a new volume. It writes structures to
the disk so the controller can use it. It is the step prior to formatting a
new disk. All data is, of course, lost.

 

[Guest]

Try typing in run:diskmgmt.msc The partitions should show,L.click