Data Recovery after accidental "covert to basic"

Hi There,

Need some desparate help !!!

I have a P4 with a 20-Gig hard drive with Win-XP-Pro installed (which works fine) however, I had another 80-Gig hard drive with 2 NTFS partions in DYNAMIC mode.

I removed the 80-Gig from the PC & placed this into an external encloser using USB. This worked perfectly fine for weeks, the only problem was that whenever I wanted to use the this external USB hard drive, I had to go into Computer Management->Disk Management and re-activate the disk(still-no problem).

Until one day I was in a hectic rush & clicked on "CONVERT TO BASIC" instead of "re-active disk"
This deleted both partitions & now i'm sitting with a 80-Gig free-space disk.
Now after windows mounted the disk, it keeps on asking me to FORMAT, which I have not done.
I have just disconnected it & left it for now.

Is there any way of retrieving this data?
If so, what are my chances of keeping the hierarchy of my files-structure?
Can I use a program to make an image of this "bad" disk which will allow me to attempt to retreive the data from one or the other still having a back-up
in case I fail on the first attempt?
I beleive that when the OS deletes the partions it only removes the MBS & leaves the data "intact ", does apply to my situation?
All help will be appreciated.

 

Reply...

Hi,
I have been off line with problems of my own, and am astonished to find your post here with no replies...

If you still need some help on this then come back.

Gizmo

 

I don't think there is too much good news?
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;309044&sd=tech#4