Reinstalled XP, can't access drive

[Yami]

In my comp I have two drives, an 80Gb and a 640GB. Now, the larger one has all of my music and Steam games and video and such, and the 80GB has XP.
I just reinstalled XP, updated and such, and now that I have installed SP2 (since vanilla XP sees the other drive as an unformatted 138GB), it now sees the larger as an unformatted drive, so I can't access any of my data - when I double-click on the drive in My Computer, it complains that it needs formatting.
How can I access it without formatting the drive? If I do a quick format, will I still have all of my data?

Please help,
- Yami

P.S. Also, I pre-downloaded the nVidia drivers onto there so it would make my life much easier if I didn't have to d/load them again >_<

 

[KSoD]

No you wont have access to your data if you format. You would need to use Recovery Software. A format delete all data. No way around it.

You should have disabled the 640GB drive until after you installed SP2.

 

[Yami]

No you wont have access to your data if you format. You would need to use Recovery Software. A format delete all data. No way around it.

You should have disabled the 640GB drive until after you installed SP2.

****. Thanks anyways, running recovery now.
The annoying thing is I had unplugged it (power+SATA) for actually installing XP (and some of the updates), I thought it would be fine to plug it in afterwards.

Edit: It blanks?

(sorry for double post)
I tried using one recovery option called 'Restoration'; didn't work though (it was halfway through the drive and had found nothing, then crashed).
I don't mind paying for a decent one if it'll work (no more than 50 quid), can anyone recommend a good one? Or is there a chance that data is lost forever? I mean, it's not incredibly important but it'll months for me to rebuild my collection.

Edit: I've tried both Restoration and Recuva now, and they each crash whenever I try to use them. Is there a way I can 'resurrect' the partition, as I believe they crash because there's no partition.

 

[KSoD]

You will have to create a partition first in order to try and recover something from the partition. Cant recover data from a RAW partition in Windows.

 

[Yami]

Okay, so use something like a W7 disc to turn it into an NTFS partition? Then attempt recover?

Sorry, this sort of thing is fairly new to me At least I'm learning. Thanks for the help!

 

[KSoD]

You can go into Disk Management and create a partition, use a Windows Disk or GParted. Any of them will accomplish this.

 

[Yami]

Wait, I just realised; for some reason in Disk Management it shows the drive in two sections of 128GB (RAW formatted) and 468GB (unformatted). Any idea how that could have happened?
Original the drive was just one large partition.

Should I delete the 128GB RAW and then turn the whole thing into one partition?

 

[KSoD]

When you connected the drive before installing SP2 the drive automatically got partitioned into 2 drives. 1 in the size limit that XP pre-SP2 could see and use, 1 for the remaining. So you will have to hope that you can recover the data. If you wish to remove the 128GB and make it 1 drive again that is your choice. But you are going to have to find some real recovery software and not no free or cheap software either.

 

[Hefemeister]

While it is not cheap, I have used easy recovery pro on formatted and reinstalled disks with good success.

File Recovery Software - File Repair - Easy Recovery - Ontrack Data Recovery