Recover data from hard disk

Question

I have formatted my C: drive and Windows XP is installed successfully, but I cannot access the D: drive. When I double click on the D: drive, the following message is displayed:

The disk in drive D: is not formatted, do you want to format it now?

When I try to access from the Command Prompt, the following message is displayed:

The volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

If you just want to recover the data, use Recuva, It'll recover the data, else use partition repair tools like Partition Magic and Disc Doctor.

Answer 2

Before you do any of the other suggestions - take a bit for bit image of the disk! Once you start running tools that change the disk you're taking steps that cannot be undone. There are a long list of tools available to do that, but the low-tech method of a Linux live CD and the "dd" command is hard to beat.

Answer 3

Have you tried with chkdsk command ? if you can't get it, try to boot with Ubuntu Live CD . Hope this helps.

Answer 4

If you're installing XP on a new system, you should ensure that you've installed all the necessary driver software so that XP can properly communicate with the hardware, including the low-level stuff it uses to interface with the hard drive.

You might want to find a partition repair utility (e.g. Partition Magic) and see whether you can have it repair the partition for you, but do this only after you've verified the above, otherwise it might do more harm than good.

Failing all else, you could try using a utility like OnTrack Easy Recovery Pro to scan for files and folders and recover them, to later copy back onto your D: drive once you successfully reformat it.

Answer 5

As Cry suggested, use a Linux-LiveCD and make an image of the disk first. After that I'd suggest to use TestDisk