does it format?

[baballin328]

I didn't know whether to put this here or in storage. But I have two HD's in my comp. One with XP Pro and one with Vista Ultimate on it. For some reason the XP Pro one doesn't boot anymore. I don't really need it to boot, but I want to get some stuff off that HD. If I convert the drive to be recognized in Vista will it format the drive? I have a lot of important stuff on that drive! HELP!

[telexen]

It didn't format it unless you told it to by giving it permission ... maybe it asked you if it could overwrite for booting.

Either way, if another Windows is installed, Vista *should* pick it up and give you an option for the other OS at boot...it has for me multiple times. And again - either way - it should recognize the drive as NTFS and mount it automatically as another drive (probably D: or E:).

So I say it's likely you did format it, or at least deleted the partition... but you can go into the Disk Management tool from Administrative Tools (Control Panel) to view the disk's partition layout.

[baballin328]

The problem is is that it doesn't detect it:
http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/4457/untitleduo5.th.jpg (http://img216.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitleduo5.jpg) It's the blank one

[Evnas]

Download a Knoppix Live CD....ultimate system recovery disk in my opinion