Is my data toast? (Vista Woes)

[isam]

So, last night I got this brilliant idea to try out the new Vista Beta 2. Well, turns out it wasn't so brilliant after all. I tried to install Vista to a spare 2nd drive which I had installed on my machine and found out after it had rebooted that the install had actually gone to my main (c drive. So, after trying many things to get it working, and following the advice of someone else (in efnet #windows), I tried to use the Recovery Console that is included with the Windows XP install CD. I ran FixMBR and FixBoot. Up until this point i was able to boot into a command prompt (which I assume was part of Vista) and see the 2 seperate systems and all my files appeared to at least be listed OK.

After the FIXMBR and FIXBOOT i am no longer able to boot into that command prompt nor to see my files. I installed Windows XP pro on a 2nd drive, and tried to mount the vista drive as a 2nd non system drive with the hope I could at least access the files. No such luck.

So... I'm basically at the point where I have run out of ideas. I have a working (sorta) install of Windows XP pro, but would like to get my data back if at all possible.

A bit of additional information: the installation of Vista did not complete. After the reboot it said it could not locate the drive that vista was attempting to be installed on (I have an IDE card which I presume it did not have the drivers for and therefore did not recognize it.)

I suspect that the only thing vista installed was the setup files. Either way, it would not let me boot into my original system and was using the vista boot loader.

Anyone have ideas on how I could get my data back?



** Yes I should have backed up my files beforehand.

*** Yes I'm gullible (an idiot some might say) for assuming the installer of Vista would work as promised. However, in my defense, I was attempting to install to a 2nd (completely clean) drive and did not think that the installer would HOSE my system and ignore my request to install to the aforementioned 2nd drive.

**** Any help is appreciated.

[Panama Red]

The first thing you should have done was disconnect your existing drive and installed Vista on the new drive. Then reconnect the old drive. Always a good rule to follow.

Do that now. Then install the other drive as a slave and see if any of your data is visible/accessible. If not, you can try some data recovery software. However, Vista would have reformatted prior to the install so chances are your data has been written over.

[isam]

I actually did try to disconnect the main system drive before doing the install. But for some reason the media wouldn't read. So I burnt another disk (on different media) and then instead of trying to install directly via a booted cd, I got smart and decided to do the install directly from WinXP ...

so.. you're right, I shouldn't have done it this way... but it's kinda after the fact, unfortunately.

As far as vista formatting, I don't think it got that far. As I said, the installed somehow got botched and it couldn't find the drive it was installing to. So I think it installed the boot loader but not much else.

As far as being able to "see" the data, I was able to do so through the command prompt in vista's safe mode (no idea why i was able to access that but I was)

I'm currently in the middle of a surface scan of the disk, to make sure the drive didn't coincidentally fail making the data actually corrupt.

When you say hook up the drive as a slave ... do u mean so it can be possibly accessed via windows XP or Vista? if the latter, should I attempt another install of Vista on the spare drive and then see if I can "see" the data?

Thanks for your replies.