Lost partition!

[harshbarj]

I have 2 hard drives that have lost their partitions (just one large partition covering the entire drive (320 and 500gb). Both were working just fine with windows xp and I unplugged them to install ubuntu on another drive(sata, and the system was off while swapping) as these are my data drives. Once that was up and running I removed the ubuntu drive and set the system back up with the xp drive. Upon booting I was greeted with a warning about a device needing drivers (the hard drives). Windows can see the drives but wants to format the partitions (as it says they are empty). Now Linux can mount the drives and I can see and access all my files fine, but the partition type is unknown(0x42). Every hardware level test says the drives are in perfect condition. Is there any way to recreate / recover the partitions so windows can see the drives without loosing the data? If all else I can buy a 1tb drive and copy the files in Linux. Thanks!

 

[RebateMonger]

If all else I can buy a 1tb drive and copy the files in Linux.

That's what I'd do. If the files have any value to you at all, and I'm guessing they do, it'd be a great idea to have a $70 1TB (or larger) backup disk. Yeah, you can probably fix the problem in other ways. Or you just might lose all the files...