I tried to install win98 on a spare IDE hard drive. So I detached my machine's current hard drive and attached the spare one (jumper set to master correctly). I went into the BIOS and it detected it. However, I didn't realise that the hard drive was faulty. So the win98 setup didn't detect the drive, it detected my USB external drive only (which I'd forgotten to switch off). So I immediately assumed that it was the drive I had just attached, and so deleted the partition. It didn't format, because it complained about not being able to boot. I think that might be because win98 can't be installed on a SATA drive (it's a SATA HDD in an external caddy, that attaches to the PC's USB).

That's when I realised what I'd done. I tried a few data recovery programs, but most only recovery files under a certain size. So basically I want my files back. Any suggestions much appreciated. Would some of the cmds from the recovery console in winxp help? fixmbr etc? I'm not great in this area :P

> I tried to install win98 on a spare IDE hard drive. So I detached my machine's
> current hard drive and attached the spare one (jumper set to master correctly).
> I went into the BIOS and it detected it. However, I didn't realise that the hard
> drive was faulty. So the win98 setup didn't detect the drive, it detected my USB
> external drive only (which I'd forgotten to switch off). So I immediately
> assumed that it was the drive I had just attached, and so deleted the partition.
> It didn't format, because it complained about not being able to boot. I think
> that might be because win98 can't be installed on a SATA drive (it's a SATA HDD
> in an external caddy, that attaches to the PC's USB).
>
> That's when I realised what I'd done. I tried a few data recovery programs, but
> most only recovery files under a certain size. So basically I want my files
> back. Any suggestions much appreciated. Would some of the cmds from the recovery
> console in winxp help? fixmbr etc? I'm not great in this area :P
>
I used Get Data Back (not sure the price) but it did a damn good job of getting MUCH of my data back.
http://www.runtime.org/products.htm

--I dwell in the realm of possibility - Anything that can possibly go wrong, will go wrong!--

Wow there are more than two people who have done this!!!

Try http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
Read the instructions twice.

UncleVom

Get Data Back is my friend, cheers for heads up. It worked a treat. That will teach me not to mess about with hardware when stoned.

nt

> Get Data Back is my friend, cheers for heads up. It worked a treat. That will
> teach me not to mess about with hardware when stoned.
>


--I dwell in the realm of possibility - Anything that can possibly go wrong, will go wrong!--