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please help me save my drive!!! :(

S

Shockwave

Banned
Ok, I pulled a SUPER dumbass move. Adding a new drive to the NTFS OS. During the process I somehow removed the format of my data drive.
Ok, here goes....
In Start -> Programs -> Admin Tools -> Comp Management -> Disk Management. I saw all drives listed (3). My primary, my data drive and the unformatted new drive. For some reason I was dorkin around and on my data drive I did SOMETHING (I cant remember what!) that erased the format type. It didnt erase the data, it just changed it from Fat32 to Unassigned. The file type somehow got removed (Like if you were to delete the MBR or something) So, now in Disk Management I have 3 drives, my Primary, my new backup and my old backup with is showing up as a Dynamic Foreign Disk type, where the other two are Basic or Dynamic.

So, how do I add my Foriegn drive type back and make it Fat32 again? Its like a brand new drive file system wise, but the data is still there.

the real crappy thing is, this new drive was to backup the backup drive. How ironic that the day the primary backup goes haywire is the day I am adding the backup drive for it and its MY FAULT the drive fails!!!

ANY suggestions. Yes, the data is important enough that it will be saved. One way or another, this data WILL COME OFF THE DRIVE. I'd rather not pay a recovery service hundreds to do it though.
 
How are you so certain that the data is safe? The drive just didn't go into wild activity like you'd expect with a format? The file allocation tables may still have been wiped, which will mean a complete recovery is needed.

I'm not sure what you could have possibly done to cause this. However a quick search on Google finds this helpful information from Dell:

A disk is marked as Foreign
The disk has been moved to your computer from another Microsoft Windows NT computer and has not been set up for use. Only dynamic disks display this status. To add the disk so that it can be used, right-click on the disk and select Import Foreign Disk. All existing volumes on the disk will be visible and accessible.

Because a volume can span more than one disk (e.g., a mirrored volume), it is important that you first verify your disk configurations and then move the entire disk set that the volume is on. If only part of the disk set is moved, some of the volumes will show Failed Redundancy or Failed error condition.
Click to expand...

Now, the obvious problem is that a FAT32 drive can't be a Dynamic volume.

You're not real clear on what happened though. First you say it changed from FAT32 to "unassigned", then you say it's a Dynamic Foreign Disk Type. "Unassigned" might mean you either deleted the partition (in which case the only way to recover it will be to use recovery software such as the old Lost & Found from Powerquest which is no longer produced, or another tool such as Disk Commander), or you simply removed the drive letter assignment. Since you don't know exactly what you did, it is difficult to suggest the correct path to repair it.

One might suggest not "dorkin around" with powerful system functions again.
 
I dont think I'll dork with that again.
Actually I was trying to add my new disk but incorrectly chose my data drive (It was the only one listed, as "Disk 1")
I also may decide to support that fine company Winternals.
 
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