I may have lost all my data, please help!

[Renegade23216]

I had a SATA hard drive with two partitions, C, and E. I needed to format windows which is the "C" partition. All my important data is saved on the second "E" partition. I inserted the windows disk, rebooted, and chose to install Windows on partition "C". I did a quick format NTFS, and rebooted. Unfortunately, it was giving disk read errors -- so I suspected an issue with the C partition or the drive.

I bought a new SECOND hard drive. Installed it. Made one big C partition, and installed windows. The original hard drive is now connected as a second SATA drive. It shows the "E" partition in my computer, for for some reason, it says the drive must be formatted every time I click on it. Why is this? Did I just lose all the data on my E-Drive? I only told Windows installation to format C:. Is there anything I can try to do to recover my E-drive? I didn't format it yet, but Windows keeps asking me to format it.

Note: Win XP is an older version with either no service pack or Service Pack 1.

 

[BakaTsuchiro]

what size is your E partion hdd? you may need to install SP2 because Xp does detect anything bigger then 137gb

 

[Rottie]

Why didn't you back up all data before you format hard drive?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Azo313

Note: Win XP is an older version with either no service pack or Service Pack 1.

Start by installing Service Pack 2 (download link), then report back.

 

[Renegade23216]

Installed SP2. It didn't help. I think the issue happened since I used an old XP without SP1. Due to not having large disk support it probably screwed up the partition tables. I found a software called EASYUS Disk Recovery Wizard (which by the way is excellent) for $80, and it was able to recover all of my lost data. Thanks for the help.