Reformatted and reinstalled XP on external drive. All my data is lost

[shammihundal]

I was trying to install XP on my girlfriends laptop that has Vista and this problem occured. I figured out that is is almost impossible to revert Vista to XP because of different drivers from SATA and SATAII drives. TO make a long story short I selected my external hard drive since I thought it was the laptop hard drive. XP Pro CD cannot recognize the laptop drive, but it did recognize my external drive. My external hard drive was connected to the laptop when I was reformatting. I just selected it and went on my way since I assume it was the right drive.

Again to make a long story short I lost everything valuable to me and want to know if there is anyway to recover some of the lost data? Please help.

 

[Nelviticus]

There is a way to possibly recover some of it but some will have been overwritten with the Windows XP files. This is still recoverable but only if you're willing to spend money.

If you do a Google search for 'data recovery' you should find several apps, some free and some not, that can recover data from a formatted disc. There are also companies that charge money for recovering data using more sophisticated methods. Don't rule these out, it's worth asking for a quote as they may be cheaper than you think.

Nelviticus

 

[wahnula]

As Nelviticus said there are a lot of recovery apps out there that will find whatever wasn't overwritten.

http://www.runtime.org

's GetDataBack is a favorite but there are many more. Doubtful you will need a recovery service as the drive itself is not damaged, and believe it or not you are not the first person to do this . In fact, a show of hands for members here who have done exactly this? I thought so (mine's up)! The lesson learned is to disconnect ALL drives but one when formatting and installing an OS, or double-triple-check that it's the right one. I'm in the "disconnect" club. Hard to mess up when there's only one drive connected. I disconnect all peripherals too.

The reason that XP did not detect the laptop's drive has nothing to do with Vista and everything to do with SATA. There is almost always a "SATA" selection in the BIOS for "Use SATA as IDE" or "Compatibility mode" that will let the machine work without the SATA drivers. If you're a perfectionist you can get those SATA drivers and make a slipstreamed boot disk using NliteOS, but the speed difference between SATA and IDE in a single-drive scenario in a typical laptop shouldn't be noticeable.

Which type of machine does she have? Lenovo supplies XP recovery CD's for a small fee, maybe other companies have similar programs.

Tony

"Buy what you like, or you'll be forced to like what you buy"...me

 

[funkytunaa]

You have probably fixed the issue by now, or completely stuffed it, but have you tried just doing a search for a file name or part of? Search for it from the root of c:\ or whatever your external is named as?

If you have just reinstalled Windows over the top then all your old files may still be there. You might also want to go to "C:\Documents and settings\" and see whether your old user is there, I've seen it before where it has stayed there, and that's where all your old files will be. If you don't nuke the partition, windows just installs over the top of what ever you have.

It's worth a try just having a look around the drive.

Cheers!

 

[shammihundal]

thank Nelviticus and wahnula.

I used GetDataBack and got everything back except for my X-box 360 ISO. That ok though I got everthing else.

My girlfriend has a dell 1420 and we called dell and they told us they couldnt do much. pretty sad service like always.

 

[wahnula]

Glad GetDataBack solved your problem. Remember to burn a CD of it for future use, and make a backup copy! The reason I asked about the system builder was that recently I purchased a budget lenovo system available only w/ Vista, I prowled their tech site and found that they will send an XP recovery set overnight for $45, and leave the option to revert to Vista in the future. It also does not void the warranty. This is a company that I highly recommend for budget sector laptops because they CARE about the customer!!!

Tony

"Buy what you like, or you'll be forced to like what you buy"...me