XP deleted my partitions on my slave drive???

[David]

When I reinstalled Windows XP my partitions on my slave
drive were removed. Now XP wants me to reformat the
drive. Is there a way to regain my old partitions and
the data that was on them?

 

[purplehaz]

What makes you think they were removed? XP does not delete or format
partitions unless you tell it to during setup and in order to do that you
have to press a few keys and answer are you sure a few times. If you did
this then they are gone. (maybe drivesavers.com couild get them back for a
hefty fee) Are the old partitions ntfs and the new install fat32? If so the
fat32 drive can't see ntfs drives. Format all drives the same. What happens
when you try to access the partitions/drives?

 

[Alex Nichol]

Are the old partitions ntfs and the new install fat32? If so the
fat32 drive can't see ntfs drives. Format all drives the same.

That is incorrect (and I'm surprised at you). It is not a 'fat32 drive'
doing the seeing. It is the system that sees drives, and can handle any
mix of types, no matter which type of file system it happens to be on.

 

[Alex Nichol]

When I reinstalled Windows XP my partitions on my slave
drive were removed.

You do not say how this came about. So it is not clear what has in fact
happened to them. To find out better, go to Control Panel - Admin Tools
- Computer Management, select Disk Management and look lower right for
the graphic of the drive. See what partitions show on there. If they
are 'Healthy - Unknown partition', which is what I suspect has happened,
they have become hidden, and you need one of the third party partition
managers to sort that point out. If all you see is 'unallocated space',
or 'free space' then they *have* been deleted. There is just a chance
that they could be recovered, but post back here first

 

[purplehaz]

That is incorrect (and I'm surprised at you). It is not a 'fat32 drive'
doing the seeing. It is the system that sees drives, and can handle any
mix of types, no matter which type of file system it happens to be on.

You're right. I knew that. Thanks.