Recover data from partially formatted hard drive?

[thecleaner]

I had a windows xp problem...computer wouldn't boot up..and I decided to restore it with a quick restore cd.

Thinking the restore cd would carefully prompt me through each step before proceeding to the final restore, it started to restore both the C and D drives. (My computer initially came with one large C drive that I had partitioned into a C "Programs" & D "Data" drives.
The restore CD apparently assumed it was restoring the one large C drive..not recognizing the partitioned C and D drives I had created.)

Like I said before it started formatting both C and D without asking me if I wanted to continue, no options, no warnings at all that it was going to take off and start formatting without asking me first! (First time ever attempting to restore.)

In my horror, I immediately stopped the restore after about 5 seconds by pulling the power cord.

I have since added a new Western Digital Drive and loaded XP onto that and partitioned it into a programs and data drive also. I now have two hard drives, the new Western Digital and the old Maxtor.

The Maxtor Drive itself shows to be perfectly healthy..mechanically okay, but the problem I have now is with the partially formatted E and F drives, not being able to run Windows on it, and not being able to access my data of course.

I wish to recover data from the Maxtor, but cannot read from that drive.

After opening "My Computer", I can see the two partitions of my Western Digital and no sign of my old Maxtor.

In Disk Management, both the Western Digital and the Maxtor are shown..each with two partitions, BUT, here's what it shows:

Western C: Healthy (System)
Digital D: Healthy
_____________________________
Maxtor (drive letter grayed out): Healthy (EISA Configuration)
F: Healthy (Active)

When I open the F: I get an error message that reads the disk is not formatted..do I want to format it now?
Didn't want to do that in case of data loss.

Can't open the grayed out drive, all that pops up is "Help" even when right clicking on it...no Properties, etc...

How do I safely, and easily if possible (not computer savvy by any stretch), recover the data from the Maxtor that was 5 seconds into the formatting process?

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this!

[willcomp]

Your best bet is GetDataBack. There is a trial version so you can see whether it will recover data before purchasing the software.
http://www.runtime.org/

[thecleaner]

I appreciate the suggestion. Someone else had also recommended it, but didn't mention the trial version.
Thanks again!

[bobbyraw]

There are numerous software you can try to recover your HDD
R-Studio
Nucleus
most work in demo mode to give you an idea how well you data will be recovered.

For future reference when you use a restore CD it WILL wipe everything from you HDD including partitions. Basically it put the PC back to the state when you got it from the manufacturer

Do a search and choose something thats right for you. there are also free utilities you can use

[caperjack]

I have R-studio and use it with great success

[articles]

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