Data Drive Partition - Inaccessible after installing W7 on new SSD

I thought I was doing good by keeping my data on a second partition of my OS drive. That way if my OS crashed my data would be still in tack on the second volume. I mean as long as the hdd didn’t crash that is.

I installed a new SSD and begin to install Windows on it. I don’t remember exactly when, but it was during the setup of Windows. It said one of my drives needed to be checked for consistency or something. I noticed though, it was referring to my data drive. I tried to press X to stop it, so I wouldn’t have to wait on it, and I could deal with it later, but I missed it.
I noticed during the check, it was finding all kinds of problems, and a lot of recovering this and that. After Windows 7 was installed on the SSD, I noticed my data drive’s second partition showing as a local drive under My Computer. Clicking on it gave me the dreaded message, “Drive needs to be formatted”. The first partition of the data drive (that has my original Windows 7 on it) is fine and still accessible. It is just the second partition, which had all my data, is now inaccessible.

Computer Management shows it as a RAW Healthy Primary Partition.
Also I have scanned the hdd for errors, and it has none, so it's not bad blocks or that the drive is dying on me all of the sudden.

What would someone recommend I use to try and recover the data from this drive?

I am trying to understand why Windows felt it needed to scan my data drive during the installation of Windows. It was not even using or needing access to it to install Windows. Is this by design when Windows is installing, to check all HDDs installed? Usually when a hdd fails to boot or start Windows, it will then ask to perform a check on the hdd during the next boot, but that is for the OS drive, not a data drive, correct?

Thanks
Mike

I'd guess the best tool to try to recover a partition is Partition Wizard. There's a Windows version and a bootable disk version. I'd probably try the bootable disk.

Your first mistake was in not disconnecting the hard drive before you tried to install Windows to the SSD. That way, it wouldn't have been a factor and couldn't have been scanned. But I'm not sure why the scan occurred.

I agree, I should have disconnected the other drive.

I thought that maybe because the other drive still had the 100MB partition from the previous Windows might had something to do with why it was scanned. But then the SSD also had one that was written to it also.

Modifyinc said:

I agree, I should have disconnected the other drive.

I thought that maybe because the other drive still had the 100MB partition from the previous Windows might had something to do with why it was scanned. But then the SSD also had one that was written to it also.

You're probably right that the 100 mb partition on the hard drive caused that scan.

Where do you stand now? SSD boots OK, but data partition on the old drive not seen and shown as RAW?

Post a screen shot of Windows Disk Management if you are still in trouble.

Let us see the requested screenshot: Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image

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