Windoze no longer recoginzing HD correctly - help!

[Xylob the Destroyer]

I recently found myself in a bad situation.
My installation of XP Home was ruined and I had to do a parralel install so that I could copy files that I needed from my C: drive to a 2ndary drive.
Once I got all the files I needed off of the C: drive and onto my back-up HD, I reformatted the OS drive and did a fresh install of XP Home.

Once I got XP all installed and updated, I started to add hardware components again.

After a shut down, I plugged both of my 2ndary hard drives back in and rebooted.
Now windows says that the hard drive that I backed all my stuff up to is not formatted!
I copied that stuff there so I wouldn't lose it when I reformatted the C: drive, now Windows says the back-up drive isn't formatted!! @$#!%**&@

WTF?!?!?

Can anybody tell me how to get my data off that drive?

[snafu099]

re-check for proper jumper settings on drives.

hopefully it is only one of those oops, duh type of problem

Does the "unformated" drive show and work properly if installed as when the os was installed on it ? if so burn the data to cd/dvd

if you have or can borrow a external drive box, test the drive in that.

I had simular issue (I think). I did a dual boot install of win xp home to two seperate drives like you to backup everything on the old drive but if a drive was moved the system did not work or the other drive was not accessable. Had to do with the master boot loader. I did get it fixed without loss of data but can't remember how.

Now I use a bootable BartPe disc with nero plug-in and a usb dvd burner to burn content of hard drive to dvd before I start working on someones pc when they say the data is critical to save

[Xylob the Destroyer]

jumper settings never changed -- there are no jumpers, I use Cable Select method.

the OS was never installed on it..

think I can put the drive into another PC and access the data?

[guns1inger]

Also, check the bios settings if the drive wasn't autodetected (most are nowadays). If the drive wasn't set to use encryption you should be able to access it from any PC. Worst case (assuming it isn't corrupt and can be read) is that you will have to override security and take ownership of the files to see them.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

BIOS auto-detected the drive (correctly!)
no encryption used on drive

no clue what you're talking about on that "override security and take ownership of the files to see them." part