formatted HD on install

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Guest

I recently installed XP pro and It wipped my secondary hard drive. It had a linux install on it (no offense to anyone) but now it has 3 partitions. 2 empty and 1 with Documents and settings folder windows folder boot.ini and some other files. XP installed normally on my other drive and it works perfectly wen I take the secondary out. No I did not tell it to do any partitioning on that drive during install. As a matter of fact, during install it didn't read the secondary drive. So now I'v lost about 8 months of hard work. Can anyone figure this one out?
 
And what file format was you using with Linux? Can XP read that format?
Try a Linux floppy distro or boot disk to read those partitions.
Recovery disk (Linux) laying around, or check the distro site.
Let us know if this helps.


mars said:
I recently installed XP pro and It wipped my secondary hard drive. It
Click to expand...
had a linux install on it (no offense to anyone) but now it has 3
partitions. 2 empty and 1 with Documents and settings folder windows
folder boot.ini and some other files. XP installed normally on my other
drive and it works perfectly wen I take the secondary out. No I did not
tell it to do any partitioning on that drive during install. As a matter
of fact, during install it didn't read the secondary drive. So now I'v
lost about 8 months of hard work. Can anyone figure this one out?
 
I beleive I was using an ext2 partition. I also had a small swap partition. Windows can't read eaither of these in the first place. I used a bootable linux version to read the disk in the first place. Thats were I found the 3 partitions. 1with some basic windows files & folders on it. Windows XP says that the hard drive is unformatted. RedHat had no info on it and I have no recovery disk.
 
I may have been a little too cryptic, sorry. That was my point, XP can't
read a Linux format. Your messages are a little confusing. When RedHat
was installed it likely had more that 3 partitions.
This would indicate that it was on both drives. XP was told to install
and did so on the primary partition, after formatting the drive to a
known file format (NTFS or FAT32), rewriting the RedHat - Boot, Root,
and the USR partitions?
If you suspect data is still available there, try again with a bootable
distro like those here.
http://www.linux-forensics.com/links.html

mars said:
I beleive I was using an ext2 partition. I also had a small swap
Click to expand...
partition. Windows can't read eaither of these in the first place. I
used a bootable linux version to read the disk in the first place. Thats
were I found the 3 partitions. 1with some basic windows files & folders
on it. Windows XP says that the hard drive is unformatted. RedHat had no
info on it and I have no recovery disk.
 
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