Recently I've reinstalled my system and after I launched new one I've noticed there is a little problem with my HDDs. At first there was only my 38gb C partition visible and after I've installed SP1 and SATA (meaning motherboard chipset) drivers I can see whole my 250GB Seagate HDD (ST3250620AS) and it is OK but... I can't see my second HDD - ST3500320AS which is there only to store data (without system). I can see it in "my computer" but I can't use it. When I'm trying to enter the only partition which is there (there should be 5 instead) it says something like "this disk is not formated yet. do you want to format it now? Yes/No":



Before system reinstall there was 5 partitions with data and I haven't changed anything to this hdd but removed system from other one and installed again.

My computer:
amd athlon 3200+ (1,8ghz)
1gb ram 667mhz
2x seagate (250gb (with system) + 500gb)
xfx geforce 9600gt
motherboard asus m2n-e (chipset something like 570 (?))
win xp home + sp3 + all drivers for motherboard, gpu, cpu etc. incl. dx9 so it's probably all I need.

- RAID OFF
- checkdisk/scandisk doesn't work
- I tried already to "resize its capacity to maximum" (I don't know what was it for but that didn't work) as I read on another forum but it says it is already 500,17GB of 500,17GB so that there is nothing to resize.

My screen is in another language but I believe it is clear enough after my explanations above.

//edit
What is this little green icon like Wi-fi on my I: drive? It is last partition of 250gb hdd but it differs from others and I don't know why.

looks like it lost the partition table. have you tried looking at it with some data recovery software?

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Step 1 - sector level backup
Step 2 - run something like testdisk on the disk image

Your I: drive has an autorun icon on it and is fully readable. It's probably a flash drive in your USB port and not a partition of your drive.

Do not run data recovery utilities on the original disk. Buy another 500GB drive and make a copy of the original first. We normally make two copies and work with a second copy.

Testdisk will normally fix something like this pretty quickly, but running it without a sector-level backup is potentially suicide for your data. Testdisk does have a built-in capability to make a copy of a disk as an image and to work with an image. Read its documentation for details.

In the event the original disk is fixable, your new drive will serve as a backup. I am sure you realize by now that you need it.

I can read this 500gb hdd using usb but I can't do it using normal sata connection.

I guess it is not crashed because I did nothing to it and 2 days ago it was fine but after installing new system it is just not visible. I guess it's systems fault so why do I need all these things to make it work?

I: drive isn't flash drive. It's my last partition but for some reason it is showed like this.

PS
I first formatted it using windows xp (previous) + sp2 and made partitions using partition magic (all are NTFS). Now it shows RAW partitions. why?

Hi Flow01, In answer to your Q 'why' the advice you have been given is correct for any data recovery scenario.

Now it appears you are saying the data is viewable if you connect through the usb interface. If that is the case you have erred by posting in the wrong forum as it appears you have some other kind of problem which is nothing to do with data recovery.
In any case a backup is good don't you think? Just in case something goes wrong.

Little mistake, I mean it is visible on other computer but when I connect it through usb to this computer it doesn't appear. Instead I got message "unknown hardware" (or something like that) and it also says that it can't recognize its name and can't find any drivers to download or use. In Control panel -> system -> device manager i can see "other devices" and little yellow question mark icon next to my unknown device.

Maybe it is caused by wrong bios settings or something? This disk works and it worked normally on XP + SP2 2 days ago. I only reinstalled system on another hdd and that is all i did.

I didn't tried recovery tools yet because I think I don't need them (I'm even sure). I think I need to change for instance data type in bios or something like that but I don't know exactly where and what should I change .

EDIT
Now I'm not sure if this unknown device is this drive because it doesn't disappear when I disconnect hdd.

This is not a data recovery issue. It's not even a hard drive issue. It is a system/formatting issue. It sounds like your SATA controller marked your drives in some fashion that is proprietary to the controller and the setup at the time. I'm generalizing because this is out of the context of this topic. The reinstall should have recognized the drive but you might need to update all of your drivers OR you updated them with the reinstall past where your original system state was.

I would recommend (as the easiest solution for me to write) that you copy the data onto one of the systems that will recognize your computer. Then wipe the drive completely and format it with your new system install. Then move all of you data onto the newly formatted drive. Cheap and easy.

Either way, disks are cheap these days. Backups are always good. And no backup is a true backup until you've tested it.

I've bought another ST3500320AS because I don't have enough space to store all these things that are there I don't have this disk yet so I'll be able to check if it works tomorrow. Thanks for your responses. If none of your methods will work I'll post here what happened later.

If your data can be retrieved from another system, do it now.

It's much cheaper to replace a system than it is to recover data from a dead drive.

I have 250gb hdd (which is almost full) and about 300gb of 500gb on second disk I don't have enough space to copy that files. Anyway I was thinking of changing my 1core athlon 3200+ 1,8ghz (which isn't very fast as for now) for q6600 so I can also buy (I just bought actually) another HDD and try how does RAID work I've never used raid before. I only hope that I will be able to copy everything, format both disks and copy all data again but with raid. We'll see tomorrow. Anyway, again thanks for all your help.