Accessing unformatted hard drive data - seriously need help!

[alteridemever]

Hey, I would greatly appreciate any help:
I have a hard drive from my old computer (formatted with FAT) that can no longer be booted from (some files were deleted, and that part is complicated). However, now I have it hooked up to my new desktop PC and Windows 2000 recognizes it, I have given it a drive letter, and I am almost ready to go. This is where my problem occurs: when I go into My Computer and try to open the drive to browse the files, a dialogue box pops up, saying "The disk in drive F is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?" Of course, I choose "no," but then I cannot access the files. How do I get around this, as I obviously cannot format the drive.
Once again, I would really appreciate any help. Thanks.

 

[irzyxel]

first id try ontrack easy recovery pro ...

 

[wolluf]

Can this app read/recover data?

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

 

[whythis]

You have what should be a "dual boot" situation, which cannot work because Win9x has to be in residence before 2K is installed for any kind of compatibility. Remove the drive with 2K and see if you can boot from the FAT drive. If not, attempt to install Win9X to the drive in question, or repair the install (yeah, I hear you all laughing). Another option, which might work better, is to remove the drive with Win2K and the drive you're having trouble with, install a new hard drive, format it with FAT and install 9X, then add back the drive in question and see if you can access the files. Then try adding back the 2K drive. In order for 2K to access files on a 9x system, you need a dual boot configuration, which means the FAT system must be preinstalled before 2K. If you can workaround this by using a recovery utility and find that easier, go for it, but if that doesn't work, I hope this helps.
whythisagainwhythisagainwhythisagainwhythisagainwhythisagain

 

[toonei]

Your okay in what your doing with the drive. If you have it installed as a slave you should be able to see it in Win2k and access it. I used to have a small drive hooked up that way that I used just for storage, Windows looks at it as a drive, like a zip etc. But, if you can't access it and Windows is trying to format it, I think I would set it to master, unhook your new drive temporarily and then try reinstalling your old operating system over the top into a different Windows folder. The default will be C:Windows, try installing it to C:Windows1 or something like that. That way it won't overwrite what is there now and you will be able to boot into the system and hopefully your data will be intact. If that doesn't work you've probably got hard drive problems.

 

[PAndersen]

If you have valuable data on the drive, don't reformat or install anything on it. There are advanced tools to read sectors and clusters from a drive.

 

[alteridemever]

First of all, I would like to thank you all for your genius suggestions. I have used many data recovery tools in the last 24 hours, but I finally have the data off. However, many of the files I need are in Zip files, and now I cannot access them. When I try to open them, I get a message saying: "Cannot open file: it does not appear to be a valid archive. If you download the file, try downloading it again." I have used two different zip file recovery programs, but both leave me without the files I am looking for. I would still greatly appreciate further help and ideas. Thank you.

 

[toonei]

To alteridemever:

Would like to hear how you finally retreived your files. If I may make a suggestion, as I have been in your shoes myself, think most of us have in one way or another. Start doing backups of your system REGULARLY. I think one of the best programs for this is GHOST by Symantec. Well worth the cost of the software, you can't put a price tag on your data. Am interested in how this turns out for you.. Good luck....

 

[MIShandled]

I had great luck with R-Studio

Product Site:

http://www.r-tt.com

I had an almost shot hard drive that looked to be totally lost, but this software was able to read every file on it for under $60. Great utility to have around if you have multiple machines with older drives.