partition Gone

[pine]

Reformated my drive in XP now my data drive is not in my computer how do i acess it

[mike breck]

What type of PC do you have - a generic PC or a brand one like Compaq, Dell, HP etc.

You need to tell us more about what you have done.

Why did you format the Hard Drive (HD) - did you already have XP installed or were you trying to upgrade from Win9x to XP?

Did you have one Hard Drive with several partitions, which had XP installed on C: and the data stored on another partition?

or

Did you have two HDs with XP installed with XP installed on the first and your data stored on the second?

Which partition or HD did you reformat - the one with the Windows?

[pine]

Toshiba laptop 20GB hardrive 15GB drive C: 5GB data E: reformated Crive with restore disks now only shows drive C: 15GB no E:drive XP was on computer

[reboot]

It's probably still there, you just can't access it.
If you put in the XP CD and boot to it, start as if a new install, hit F8 to agree to the TOS, and then it should prompt you to "Repair a current installation". If XP is still there on E, select it, and hit "R".
This will rewrite the MBR on C, and should give you the dual-boot option again, or at least give you the option to boot to XP, depending on what's on C.

[pine]

Would the unhide feature in partition magic bring drive E: back so i could acess it ?

[reboot]

Only if you used PM to hide it.

[mike breck]

Jim,

I don't think Pine had a dual-boot system.

Are you saying he should run a repair on C: to get the data partition E: to show up in Disk Management?

**********************************************
Pine

Did you use Partition Magic to make the E: partition Pine?

I'm not sure about three things:

1) Do Toshiba laptops have a proprietary partition on the HD for BIOS or system files

2) Does using the Restore CD wipe the entire HD or only the partition where Windows resides.

3) How does using the Restore CD affect the HD if has been partitioned with Partition Magic.

What does Disk Management say about the missing 5Gigs

Control Panel
Click on "Performance and Maintenance
Administrative Tools
Computer Management
Storage
Disk Management

Is it unallocated space?

[reboot]

I don't care where XP is installed, the boot files MUST be on C.
He's formatted C, so nothing works, no boot, incorrect MBR, etc.
Run a repair install, and that will write the needed boot files to C, including boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com, etc.
He's mentioned that C still shows up as 15 gig of a 20 gig drive, so E is still there, probably intact, at 5 gig.
If it is intact, the repair will fix it up.
If it is NOT, because of the "Restore disk", then there will be no previous OS to repair (3rd step in the process above).
Either way, he can get back what's there, or install XP on C fresh, which will allow him to read E, although the drive letters may change, and nothing will work, at least he can get data back.

[mike breck]

Yeah,

But I've read of people using Partition Magic with XP to create new partitions which were subsequently lost after wiping the C: partition. Hence my asking about unallocated space.

I thought Pine HAD ALREADY reinstalled XP onto C: using the Recovery disk and now his data partition "E:" won't show up in My Computer in XP.

Pine, could you please clarify.

Have you reinstalled XP using the Recovery CD?

Is XP starting OK?

Is the "E:" partition not showing up in Windows