Windows 7: Connected old HDD from XP and 7 recognizes as Recovery Partition

Hey guys,

I'm having a bit of a problem. I recently built a new computer and it has Windows 7 64-bit on it. My old computer is a Windows XP. Now the Windows XP had 2 physical hard drives. One was the boot (320gb) of course and the other one was data (160gb).

I connected both of these drives to my NEW computer running Windows 7. Now I can access ONE of the drives (320gb) which was the boot drive in my old computer. It was partitioned and I can access both of them which is great.

Now the 160gb data HD.. it doesn't come up in My Computer. BIOS recognizes it and so does Disk Management. However in Disk Management, it comes up as a Recovery Partition (all 160gb of it). If I right click it, I only get "Help" and no other options. Theres data on the HD from XP that I really need but I can't even format it.

Can anyone help me with this?

Thanks

Can you post a screen shot of Disk management?
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...en-forums.html

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I've attached the Disk Management sshot.

Thanks!

To recover your data, try to copy-paste from the recovery console. Once you have your data off, try diskpart to clean and format the disk for windows 7 use.

In that thread, it says that the HD needs to be readable by the PC. Is that the case with mine? I mean yes BIOS and Disk Management recognize it but they show the data as 100% FREE.

It does need to be readable. If it came from XP it should be readable from windows 7. If you have an external hard drive enclosure, try putting it in that and see if you can assign it a drive letter. Once it is assigned a drive letter you can open it and look at what is inside. Another option is to download Recuva, which is a free recovery program. You could also try to assign it a letter using diskpart.

^ You are awesome. I just got into diskpart and assigned a letter to it and the drive showed up in My Computer. However in Disk Management, it has NO letter and still is a Recovery partition which I am okay with. I'm gonna get the data off it and format the entire thing using Diskpart.

Thanks very much!

Glad I could help. I was scratching my head for a while though.