WinXP doesn't recognize files on 2nd HD after format

Hello everyone, first time poster here.

Here is my problem.

I have a PC with 2 hard drives set in raid 0 and 1. I had the winXP on the first hard drive and used the 2nd hd for data only; videos, pictures, music and so on. I recently formatted the XP and reinstalled it on the first hd. Now, xp sees the 2nd hard drive but it doesn't recognize the file system. XP sees the second hard drive as raw file system and it wants to format it. I know both hard drive are working fine. Is there a way to make xp see the second hd as ntfs file system? or is there an easy way to rebuild the file system as ntfs without loosing the data?

Thanks everyone,

drew

 

I have never delt with raid hdd's so not sure if it will work or not.

you can try "TESTDISK" -be sure to read the How To USE
http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html
can assist in its use.

or Partition Doctor. its a pay for program and do not have a site.

 

What do you mean by "I have a PC with 2 hard drives set in raid 0 and 1." ? For any of RAID to work, you need minimum of 2 drives. In RAID 0 the data is striped on both the hard disks at the same time & in RAID 1, its mirrored.

It seems that you have broken the RAID by formatting your 1st hard disk. If that is the case, nothing can be recovered in case of RAID 0, but all your data should be there in case of RAID 1.

 

I think we have a little bit of a terminology problem re: RAID 0 and 1. rsinfo is very correct if you had a striped RAID configuration (RAID 0) utilizing the two drives. If this was the case and you have now, in essence, removed the RAID configuration, your second drive is and forever will be unreadable until you reformat it. If you had a mirrored RAID (RAID 1), then you should be able to read the second HDD but it doesn't sound like this is your situation.

It would be impossible for you to have both a RAID 0 and a RAID 1 configuration with just two drives, so I'll look to you to clarify just what you meant if any further explanation is required.

 

RAID utility

when i boot my pc, where it says press F4 to access raid utility, it shows two hard drives like this.

0 WD12
1 Maxtor

I better read more on RAID i guess.

thanks,
drew

 

drew, the BIOS is showing you the hard disks installed on your computer and NOT the RAID hard disk(s).

But what I fail to understand is how you assumed that you are using RAID ? Its a tedious process and must be run at least once from BIOS & then from Windows XP.