Accessing my Storage drive

[St_Maunsell]

Recently I've been having some issues with Windows 7 and so I decided to re-install Windows onto my SSD. I got everything working but I cannot access my secondary hard drive used for mass storage. It shows up in the BIOS and in Computer Management but when I assign it a drive letter I am asked to format the drive before windows can access the drive. Is there a way I can remount my hard drive and access it without formatting the drive?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey St_Maunsell. Did you remember to disconnect all other drives before the fresh install of Windows on your SSD? Other than that you could try accessing the drive via Linux Live USB/CD to see if you'll be able to get to your files and recover them. You could also try some of the data recovery options from this thread here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html
You could also try those solutions with your drive connected to another computer.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

 

[St_Maunsell]

No I didn't disconnect my storage drive when I 're installed windows. Sadly putting my drive in another computer isn't an option and neither is using a Linux disk as I have no way of saving my data

 

[Boogieman_WD]

What does it say about the partition of this drive when you look it up in Disk Management? If it's RAW format, perhaps you could try some sort of a partition repair tool if you don't want to reformat (but it a bit of a long shot). Other than that, I think that you best bet remains data recovery software or trying to access the drive with Linux Live USB/CD, but that will require an additional drive so that there's enough space where you can store the recovered data.