Foulup: Recover Previous NTFS Partition in Vista?

[bobthebuilder1]

Okay, I've fouled up.

I was installing Windows XP in anticipation of my upgrade to Vista 64 and then I made one of the most boneheaded mistakes to date in regards to computers. My previous SATA RAID array was the same size as my IDE hardrive (used for backups). After going through the blue prompt screens for installing Windows XP I decided I was going to reformat the RAID array. Well, not paying attention, I accidentally deleted (unmounted, is that the proper term?) the actual IDE hardrive partition that was holding all my files with the backup.

After realizing that I had removed the partition I didn't follow up and format that drive. Nothing should be lost I'm thinking, as all I did was get rid of the partition and not overwrite the previous data. Next I actually setup the proper partition on the SATA RAID and installed XP and then Vista without any issue.

Upon re-entering Vista however, the hardrive that has all my precious files on it shows up under the "Computer" window. Double clicking it just prompts you to "You need to format this drive before you can use it". Obviously I don't want to format over my files, but rather recover them.

Is there a way to remount a partition using Windows or some other diagnostic tool from a 3rd party? Nothing is deleted that I know of, but I need to find a way to make Vista see it as a proper volume again.

Any ideas or suggestions?

 

[Dahak]

you would have to get a data recovery program like ontrack easy recovery pro or similar.
there could be some utilities out there that could read the old mft from before the format but i dont know of any

 

[bobthebuilder1]

There seems like a thousand and one programs to do this. I was hoping there was a way to do it within Windows/DOS without too much hassle. I'll look into buying a program once I know it seems like it will do the job.

 

[Dahak]

unfortunately there is no way in dos/windows to do it without a 3rd party program. some other ppl might have some suggestions too

probably the easiest was its my first suggestions where you recover the data off the drive and store it somewhere with the likes of easy recovery pro or r-studio