Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 IDE Drive

[azdragon]

I recently had to reinstall Windows XP and after doing so my Primary Slave Drive which is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 IDE Drive is recognized in the Device Manager, also in Windows Explore but as a Removable Disk Drive and asks for a disk to be inserted and it also shows up in the Windows Disk Manager but has 3 partitions - 1 unallocated - 104.01 GB - 1 Healthy Unknown Partition - 811.57 GB and a second Healthy Unknown Partition - 259.39 GB which is almost 1175 GB of space on a 500 GB drive, doesn't make much sense?  I have un-installed the drive and reinstalled it, also tried to change the IDE configuration, checked the jumper settings and they are OK.  I am at my wits end because I have some valuable information stored on this drive I would and need to access.  Can anyone help me? Thanks,  azdragon

[killerb255]

1) When does it ask for a disk to be inserted? 

2) What is the EXACT message you are getting? 

3) How many partitions were on that drive originally?

4) What operating system(s) was/were on that drive originally?

[azdragon]

Yes it asked for media to be inserted

Please insert disk into drive.

There were 3 partitions

No operating system on this partition for Drive D:\  Windows XP Pro was on the first partition Drive C:\

[patio]

At this point your best bet is to hook it up as a slave drive on a working system and try and recover your data...
Then i would DLoad and run the drive mauf. diagnostics on it before trusting it for your important data.
Good Luck.