Corrupt hard drive

[Hodsocks]

Can someone explain to me what is going on with a hard drive because I can;t explain it.
I had a pc with a 40GB hard drive which was full so decided to fit a 160GB drive, I installedit but before I turned on the pc I decided to disconnect the old drive. I then formatted the new drive and loaded windows onto it. I then reconnected up the old drive, having checked jumper settings were correct and booted up the computer. The BIOS detected both drives but once in windows the old drive was not shown in "My Computer", it was there in device manager and in "disk management" but was showing as offline and unformatted.
I then booted up from a cd with puppy linux on it and the small drive was not detected at all.
I am at a loss as to what has happened to the drive as all I have done is disconnect it and then connect it up again. How do I get at the information on the old drive?

 

[LookinAround]

Can you attach a screen capture .jpg file of what you're seeing in Disk Management?

Your problem might be that windows doesn't think your drive is formatted. (could be the filesystem is corrupt)

 

[Hodsocks]

Sorry for slow reply, screen capture attached:

 

[LookinAround]

Yea.... You must have had some type of filesystem corruption as Windows detects the disk but doesn't recognize a partition on it.

Try running TestDisk (freeware data / partition recovery tool). I've never used it but have seen that it's been able to help many in similar situations. Hope it can work for you as well!!

note: If you want to be very careful about data recovery, you might want first create a sector-by-sector image of the hard drive as any data recovery effort will modify the current disk image. So, by first creating backup image, you're assured you can always get back to the current point in time if need be. TestDisk seems to be pretty good but just adding that as fyi should you want to take the "extra time and precaution"

 

[ucould2]

You didn't create some kind of mirror drive when you attached the new 160Gb using the Raid? Just thought I'd put it out there not exactly sure how you created your partition, but I did notice you are using a Raid device and that you have two drives "similar"?
What happens if you attach the problem drive to the Raid does it open?

@ LookinAround but just adding that as fyi should you want to take the "extra time and precaution"

 

[LookinAround]

You didn't create some kind of mirror drive when you attached the new 160Gb using the Raid? Just thought I'd put it out there not exactly sure how you created your partition, but I did notice you are using a Raid device and that you have two drives "similar"?
What happens if you attach the problem drive to the Raid does it open?

good question ucould2! I didn't notice SATA Raid listed in their specs

 

[Hodsocks]

Sorry lads, this pc is not listed in my profile but one I am looking at and the only 2 drives fitted are the new 160GB and the old 40GB.
LookingAround, thanks for the tip with the Testdisk program because I am pleased to report that it did the job and I got the data back so I think we can put this to bed now.