Reformating and NTFS harddrives

I had a question in related to NTFS. I have 3 hard drives all ntfs format. Out of the 3 one has my windows XP on it. If i reformat (meaning install a fresh copy of windows) the drive with the XP on, will I be able to still read my files on the other hard drives after I do a reformat.


Thanks for any help on this noob question

 

If you only format the drive with the OS and reinstall the other drives should still work. The drives may be given a different drive letter then they had before. IF you installed any programs on the other drives, the programs will not work, and all short cuts will be gone for the data on the other drives.

A reinstall of XP has been knowen to change a bit in the VBR (volume boot record) makeing the new install think the other drives need reformated, but a third party program TESTDISK will correct the error. (the problem does not aways happen just sometimes)

Just be sure you format and install XP on the correct drive.
Is it 3 diferent hdd's or 1 hdd with 3 partitions ? (does not realy matter unless you have a problem)