Windows Vista 2nd Hard Drive Problem

My computer crashed this morning and I was forced to do a fresh install of the OS. Since I was now starting from scratch, I decided to use Vista rather than XP... My problem, during the install Vista did not recognize the 2nd hard drive and assign it a letter drive. In the device manager I can see it, but no letter and so I cannot access it. I figured out how to assign it a letter, but of course it wants to re-format that drive now too. I would really rather not re-format that drive....sigh. Am I *******?

Your thoughts would be most appreciated after this really long day of computer woes!

 

Hello JDUB and welcome to the Board,

In Disk Mangement (Right click Computer > Manage > Disk Management), how does the 2nd HD show up? As unallowcated space?

When trying to assign a drive letter using Disk Management, are you asked to format it or forced to?

What's on that 2nd HD? User data only? How many partitions?

 

It says Simple - Basic - Raw - Healthy Primary Partion. I was given the option to format or not and I chose not to. It does now show as the "I" drive, but it cannot be read via Windows Explorer etc..

It is unpartioned and contains backup data, no software. The thing that is killing me is that was the drive that a lot of my data was backed up to. Some of that drive has redundant backup, but there is enough that I don't want to have to replace that i am trying to sort out what can be done.

I really appreciate your time.

Jeff