RAW DATA

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Hi every1, Im new and want to say hey!.
I have a small(HUGE) problem. I just brought a 300Gb HDD and put all my stuff on it, then i formatted the other 2 drives and reinstalled windows XP on the larger of the 2 to use as my C: drive. I then put back the 300Gb HDD but when i try to access it i get a message saying the drive needs to be formatted(yes i forgot to format the drive first ). When i go to properties, it is all blue indecating it is full but it says 0 space used and 0 space available. I have heard of the term RAW Data and i am wondering if there is any way i can retrieve all my files.
Needing a Miracle.
Thanks
John

 

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Just how did you manage to copy your information to an unformatted hard drive?

 

For recovering the data off your other two hard drives, try this. The disk you installed XP on probably has a lot of over-written data but you might be able to at least recover some of it.

PS. Make sure you install the software, and the data you want to recover to the 300 gig hard drive, not to one of the drives you're trying to recover data from.

 

Hi and welcome to CF.

I must admit I'm a bit confused as to what precisely you did!

You bought a 300GB drive and 'put all your stuff on it'. This implies that you partitioned and formatted it first! Otherwise you would not have been able to see it to put things on.

When you say you put back the 300GB, had you disconnected it while installing XP again? XP sometimes can do strange things to connected and previously formatted drives.

Perhaps we need a listing of the drives and the partitions on them to get it clear!

Harry.

 

Hi again.
No I didn't partition or format the 300Gb HDD, all i did was to connect it to my computer and windows was able to see it and i right click, drag and droped all my data onto it. The drive and everything in it was in blue writing in the directory tree on the left, while all the other drives were in black writing. I had all 3 HDD's connected at the same time so i could transfer all my data. When i finished transfering the data, i disconnected the 300Gb and formatted the other 2 HDD's. My C: was an 80 Gb HDD and the second was a 120 Gb HDD. I then reinstalled Windows on the 120 Gb and I am using this as my C:. Then i reconnected the 300Gb, Windows saw the drive but when i try to access it in any way, I get the Unformatted drive message, do i want to format now?. (hell no i don't) What should i do?
Thanks Harry

 

First I would check your master/slave settings on the drive....

Also did you physically move the drive off one cable connector and onto another cable connector??

BTW - if you did a drag and drop then you did a cut and paste not a copy??

A real possibility is that your disk still has its data and is merely a foreign disk - this is okay and straightforward to fix...
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/Library/4b6d9afa-0e0d-4afb-a42f-00c1154cb3791033.mspx

HTH

supa

 

Hey,
Thanks ffreeloader, I think i will have to try this Program you sugested, but is says nothing about getting data from an unformatted HDD. I think ill have to try the other 2 drives and start all over again. If I recover most of my data, ill be happy
Thanks again

 

Hi supag33k,
Thanks for the help.
I just discovered that the 300GB is set at 31.5 Gb in Disc Manager, so i think the jumper settings are wrong. Ill have a play with the jumpers and see if that helps.
Thanx again
John

 

Do you get any data from the 31gb volume? - if yes then the earlier copy operation was borked and the jumpers are okay.

Also does the BIOS report the drive as 300GB??

Note that if the source volume prior to copying was using any disk compression then you are hosed as the data is gone...

 

HEY HEY HEY, Supag33k
Your The Man.
I was reading the jumper settings wrong and changed them, I now have my 300Gb back and ALL my data is there. It's still in blue not black writing but its there(im a happy man).
Thanx heaps for the help,
And thanks to every1 els who replied and helped me.
John

 

No problemo...

 

As a default in XP compressed data using windows compression will be shown in blue.

Could this be the problem here.