I have 2 HD's on my computer, 1 of them is a 500gb sata and another is an 80gb ide.
i installed a clean vista on the 500gb with some of my files (and was my only copy) on that disk. I formatted the 80gb while i was in vista and popped in the winxp disk in and tried to install xp on the 80gb hd.
so i rebooted, and ran the install disk and when it came to hd partition, i thought i selected the 80gb partition, so i created a new raw partition and did a quick ntfs format. then i install xp on that partition. but after i booted in xp, installed all the updates and drivers and controllers, i found i didnt get xp on my 80gb, but it was on my 500gb. for some reason (and i suppose it was because xp couldn't recognize drives larger than 127gb), the partition that xp is on is 127gb and when i ran disk management there's about 337gb of "unallocated" space.
i'm assuming my files are still on that space (hopefully, i know it could be possible it's not since i probably accidentally repartitioned the drive) and i want to recover them. vista does not boot from this drive, and when i use the vista disk, i end up getting the install menu. i'm downloading spinrite right now and i'll probably try it... but is there a way for me to recover those files? my bios recognize the 500gb so it's obviously an xp problem.. so i guess my question is how i will i access the 337gb of "unallocated" space without partitioning it and thus formatting and deleting the data?
i installed a clean vista on the 500gb with some of my files (and was my only copy) on that disk. I formatted the 80gb while i was in vista and popped in the winxp disk in and tried to install xp on the 80gb hd.
so i rebooted, and ran the install disk and when it came to hd partition, i thought i selected the 80gb partition, so i created a new raw partition and did a quick ntfs format. then i install xp on that partition. but after i booted in xp, installed all the updates and drivers and controllers, i found i didnt get xp on my 80gb, but it was on my 500gb. for some reason (and i suppose it was because xp couldn't recognize drives larger than 127gb), the partition that xp is on is 127gb and when i ran disk management there's about 337gb of "unallocated" space.
i'm assuming my files are still on that space (hopefully, i know it could be possible it's not since i probably accidentally repartitioned the drive) and i want to recover them. vista does not boot from this drive, and when i use the vista disk, i end up getting the install menu. i'm downloading spinrite right now and i'll probably try it... but is there a way for me to recover those files? my bios recognize the 500gb so it's obviously an xp problem.. so i guess my question is how i will i access the 337gb of "unallocated" space without partitioning it and thus formatting and deleting the data?
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