How access data on a second hard disk?

Question

I have installed a second hard drive which contains all my backed up data.  XP (Disk Manager) can see the disk is there but I can't access it without assigning a letter to it.  However, it won't let me assign a letter to it without creating a  partion, which it appears will wipe all the data from the disk.    So how can I access the data on this second disk?

Answer 1

Oh, sorry. I thought there was a way to post a picture. I guess to post the picture here you would have to upload it to somewhere like photobucket and then post the link to the picture here.

Answer 2

I am sorry to be dim.  I can take and save the screenshot but I can't see any way of posting it here.  It won't accept a 'paste' into this text and I can't see any way of posting it as an attachment!

Answer 3

To easily make a screenshot, press alt+ print screen (to the right of F12), to make a screenshot of the currently selected window, or just print screen to make a screenshot of the entire screen. Then open up paint, and press ctrl V to paste it. You could then save that picture and post it here.

Answer 4

James, many thanks for your comments.  I should have given the full story.  I assigned the second disk a letter  and have been backing up to it for a couple of years.  Recently I had to re-install Windows after a fatal error which of course wiped my C drive.  I am now trying to restore to my C drive my backed up data from, what was, my F drive. 

I have tried to copy a screen shot in here but it doesn't look as if it has worked.  I will keep working on that.

Answer 5

If the hard drive has your backed up data on it, then it has a partition. It's not possible to store data on something without a partition. If the partition was deleted with the data still on it, there are special tools you could use to recover the data, but that shouldn't be necessary here unless you did delete the partition. Could you post a screenshot of what disk management shows?