drive not accessible - unallocated space

You could try this.

Remove the Disk with your data on it.

Do a clean install of XP on your remaining drive.

After all good, power off and reconnect your second drive with your data on it.

Then go-to computer management (right click on the MY computer icon select "manage"), Go to disk management then assign your second drive a letter and you should be sweet.

If the above doesn't cure your problem and the MBR is trashed then the most likely culprit is the Power Supply where the 5 V DC Rail has gone low and caused the HDD to loose the MBR.

I would try On Track's Easy Data Recovery pro to rebuild the MBR on the drive as you are risking way too much relying on MS to do the right thing and the costs involved if it messes up the drive are horrendous.

If the above works it's time to instigate a DR Plan and store your data outside your computer where it isn't subject to the problems that can and do happen in the case. The cheapest method is to backup to an external USB drive but if you do this make sure that it is one of the powered ones that doesn't draw its power from the USB Port and most importantly you only have it turned on when you need the drive not all the time.

Col

To recover the data, use an application that can read the disk in it's current state.
You might like to try a freebie from Download.com that I have used "PC Inspector File Recovery 3.0". There are plenty of data recovery solutions available, and the answers already put forward are excellent suggestions.

It may be just me but doesn't fdisk /mbr only work with Fat16 and Fat32? I've checked my XP command line reference and M$ site and don't see it applied to NTFS which is a normal XP drive format. I've never used it on an XP drive.

If you've become dissatisfied with your antispam software and have recovered your data using one of these other suggestions, you might want to try the free, relatively little known, spamihilator program from www.spamihilator.com.

As already answered it does looks like it is time to develop a good backup, disaster recovery plan and use external USB drives that are normally OFF as well as archiving important files (like music and unchanging databases) to DVD and placing them into a fireproof safe or a bank safe-deposit box.

It looks like it may be time to get a better Internet Security solution too. TrendMicro's
PC-cillin 2006 is a great all-in-one program

I think if you can see that drive in disk management as unallocated space you probably are going to have to bite the bullet and reformat. If you suspect a virus/trojan or whatever a reformat is the best way to go anyway.

If this is a business PC and/or there is a lot of VERY important, expensive data that's going to be lost there are a lot of forensic recovery tools other than the one mentioned. If the data is emails, address book, pix, etc. it might not be worth your time (except for those Cancun pix!)The learning experience might be interesting.

If it turns out to be a 5v rail/PS problem look into a good line-conditioning UPS besides just using surge suppressors. Some areas, household and businesses are notorious for voltage spikes and drops that will shorten the lifespan of your Power Supply.

fdisk /mbr "usually" doesn't trash the data on the drive. It mostly depends on what kinda damage was done to the mbr. Then again, i haven't seen it work on ntfs as mentioned above. Using things like PCIFileRecovery(nice!!) will only also work on fat16/32. GetDataBack for ntfs will do for recovering your files even from partitioned and formatted drives. I used that one to recover 40GB worth of files from win2000 to win98se!!! Worked nice!!!
If it really was a virus, formatting should always be a LAST option!!! Ya don't learn anything and ya stand to lose everything!!! Try various scanners. Note the "s" at the end of scannerS. It's there with good reason!! Many of them can run just fine from bootdisks. Just make sure the bootdisk you use is clean!!

Have Fun!!!

Hi Guys thnks for the replies .. NZ Justice, tried that and it didnt work, finished up using diskpatch to recover the partition detail.
HAL 9000 easy recovery pro was the next step actually, and thankfully its recovering quite a bit of data, not sure as yet how much is good but hopefully most of it will be . Also concerning the USB external drive I do use one actually, but had it attached to a customers drive at the time, thinking I'd 'do mine' next! Oh well, but yeah I do need to backup more often.
With regard to my AV solutions, I use a variety to be honest ( but as we all know theyre not infalible) I use NOD32 and Pest Patrol as a resident scanners and have recently added Microsofts AV beta to try. I also use 2 web based virus scanners (bitdefender & panda activescan pro) for the sake of completeness once a month .. ( yeah you're right I hadn't gotten to that either! ) so basically the voltage does need checking, althought I do have a decent 400W+ power supply in my system.
That said I appreciate everybodies response and taking the time to offer advice, many thanks to all of you.
glenn

Use Partition Magic So You won't have any worries. Good Luck!