Accidently formatted and installed Windows XP

[dreamworks]

Hi Guys ..

Did a major mistake. Was helping out a friend to repair his PC, and so it comes with 2 hard disk drive. 1st being the master is currently installed with Windows XP while the 2nd being the slave is used for all the data, files, and pst files.

The problem is .. I am suppose to have installed a fresh copy of Windows XP into the 1st drive, but I accidently unplugged the wrong drive and installed it into the 2nd drive instead. Now the drive has nothing but a fresh copy of an unactivated Windows XP.

Is there a way to recover the data lost?? Please help ...

 

[RickyC]

Yes, but it will cost you!

On another note, you could try using one of the various UnDelete programs on the market.

http://www.active-undelete.com/

This one has served me well in the past, I haven't tried it on a formatted drive though.

 

[VenomXt]

you can allways try get data back ntfs ... but your most likely hosed. in putting Xp on the drive you overwrite some space allready.

 

[dreamworks]

Yeah I know guys ..

Thanks .. I'll try out these programs and pray. Any other suggestions please do inform me ..

 

[Hipster Doofus]

You probably up the creek without a paddle.

Future reference: You don't need to unpug drives. Just boot with the xp cd. It will show what is what so you format the correct drive.

 

[LeeJend]

It depends on if you did a quick format or a full format. You might be able to recover all but the 2-4 gig XP uses if it was just a quick format.


And always back up data to DVD. A second HD in the same system is at risk from power supply or lighting or what you just did.

BTW don't feel to bad. I'll admit I did the same once and I'll bet most of the other people here have too.

 

[melon]

They say that in thwarting law enforcement, you'd have to do the equivalent of eight low-level formats. Chances are that someone, somewhere might be able to recover it, but yeah...it will be tough and maybe costly.

Melon