Drive Formatted Accidently.. is it possible to recover????

Question

I had two NTFS partitions on my hdd and had winXP installed. due to slow performance i formatted c: from windows 98 setup disc(big mistake, i think) and installed windows 98. But the drive d: (other NTFS partition) didnt show up in windows explorer in win98 - then i came to know that win98 doesnot support NTFS system and upgraded to winXP. but again i didnt see d: . I chose only to format ONE partition in win98 setup - and that was c:\ .... can anyone tell me what could be the problem \ mistake and what can i do to access the other partition -d drive?i have a presario m2000 laptop so attaching hard disk to another machine is not passible... i have some important data there...
i checked the total volume of my hard disk from device manager which is 38 GB. checking c: also returns the same value... Does this imply that there is NO other partition present in the sytem or it is just hidden so that it just won't show up by any way???
Please Help..............

Answer 1

yes its possible, could tell you how but what you need is:


http://www.stellarinfo.com/download/download_form.php?sid=5

ps. it all depends how your drive was formatted, usually you will be able to recover it, unless you did what is called a deep format which can only be done from the bios in your pc.

Answer 2

If you can get into XP, go into Computer Management under Administrative tools in the control panel. there will be an option for storage. See if it can see your partition. It may have simply had the letter removed. Restore the drive letter and it should show up in explorer.
You can also remove the drive and connect it to an IDE to USB cable (BYTECC BT-200 USB2.0 to IDE Cable With Power Adapter - Retail for $19 at newegg.com) and plug it into a desktop system, and see if there is anything of your partition.

Last suggestion, there are software packages which might be able to recover the data from a formatted partition. (http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Utilities/Backup_and_Copy_Utilities/Deleted_NTFS_Partition_Data_Recovery.html
is one that a google search of "recovering an ntfs partition"
found)

Answer 3

Nope.. your knackered mate. Systems way too old and by the sounds of it.. TOO UNSTABLE to recover. Save your self the time & bother and go to DELL for a new PC :D.. in regards to your data, ring microsoft, they can get an engineer out to you.
mJohno

Answer 4

Unfortunately, once a hard drive has been formatted there is no way to recover the data.

Answer 5

I didn't get your question right..

If you cannot access the D: drive, why not upgrade back to windows xp and see if you will be able to access it then.

Answer 6

nope...you screwed the pooch