While reinstalling XP I think I have deleted the partition on a external hard drive… is that possible?
When I plug it in now windows can't see it.
Am I likely to be able to retrieve it?
Any advice would be appreciated.
Hi Ztruker, thanks for responding.
I was reinstalling XP and where one is given the choice to delete partitions, and because I wanted to increase the size of the C drive I deleted all partitions to do so.
I had an external USB drive that I use for backup connected.
The hard drive only had 2 partitions, (C and D drives) and when given the choice in setup to delete partitions, there were 3 partitions and (like an idiot) I deleted all of them.
Reinstalled XP but the external drive was no longer there, or wasn't being seen.
I downloaded retrieval software, (7 data recovery suite), which retrieved the data magnificently.
So that problem is solved.
So my dilemma now is that I would like to get the external drive to work again.
I am assuming that I need to format that drive.
My question therefore is how to do that?
I am assuming (again) that I could do it by rerunning the XP setup disc again and formatting (ONLY THAT DRIVE) from there.
Will that mess with my new install?
Is there another/better way to do it?
Is the external drive detected when you plug it in to the USB port? Usually you hear a small ba-dink sound.
If yes, open Disk Management and see if the external drive shows there. If yes, you can try assigning a drive letter to the partitions if they don't have one.
Otherwise you can delete the partitions on it, create new ones and format. Make sure you backup whatever is there as it will be gone after the format.
The disk was present in disk management, so I partitioned and formatted and now all is well again.
Thank you kindly for your help Ztruker, much appreciated!
