New Partition, but files on Old Partition

long story short
I had a Disk Read Error yesterday on our old pc
could not re-boot
used the install disk and created a new NTFS partition and re-installed Windows XP
all seems well now

however,
there were still some files
(not lots, but still of relative importance - and no - I KNOW - no backup)
on/in the old FAT partition

is there a way to retrieve these files???
(and please hold my hand and walk beside me through any detailed responses - i am a slow learner...)

TIA!

First i need to know what operating system your computer used to have.

If you can access these files transfer them to an external storage device, like a flash drive, CD/DVD, or external hdd.

You can do this by going to Start and right click on it, click on Explore. Look in the left side pane for the location of partition that you want and click on it. This will open in the right side pane. You can just click on and drag the files to the storage device that you wish to use.

WinXP
Version 2002

The pc is a Dell Pentium - it had XP and that is also what i re-installed, from the original disk.

I cannot actually "see" the partition or the files from Windows or DOS.
That is the problem.

I tried to use "TestDisk" to write (re-write?) the files, but I am not doing something correctly.
It (TestDisk program) does see the partition.

Also, if I go into Computer Management, and Disk Managment, it shows Disk 0 divided -one volume is not named(!) - Layout=Partition, Type=Basic, File System=FAT, Status=Healthy (EISA Configuration); the new partition is C:, Layout=Partition, Type=Basic, File System=NTFS, Status=Healthy (System).

Is it simply a matter of renaming that volume??

I hope this is what you needed.
Tx!

I forgot to add - if it's relevant -
the old partition is 31 MB,
the new is 37.25 GB.

Can you see the FAT partition in Explore?

No.
Only the folders on the new partition.

And sorry for the delayed response - I am not receiving any e-mail notifications - I just assumed there had been no response...

I understand Disk Management says that it is FAT, but if my knowledge serves me correctly, plain old FAT was only available for DOS. Also, i believe that XP only allows for NTFS and FAT32. So is this partition FAT16 or FAT32?

Edited by jnk1296, 03 September 2010 - 12:25 PM.

Open a command prompt (Start Menu -> Run, type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter)

Report here what you see (number of disks and partitions(volumes) and their file system type and sizes).

Edited by Romeo29, 03 September 2010 - 11:39 AM.

same as before:
Disk 0 divided -one volume is not named(!) - Layout=Partition, Type=Basic, File System=FAT, Status=Healthy (EISA Configuration); the new partition is C:, Layout=Partition, Type=Basic, File System=NTFS, Status=Healthy (System).


at the top:
Volume (BLANK - unnamed), Partition, Basic, FAT, Healthy (EISA Configuration), 31 MB, 24 MB, 77% Free, No (Fault Tolerance), 0% (Overhead)
Volume (C:), Partition, Basic, NTFS, Healthy (System), 37.25 GB, 32.94 GB, 88%, No, 0%

then at the bottom:
Disk 0
Basic
37.28 GB
Online

then shows the 2 partitions 31 MB FAT Healthy (EISA Config) shaded, and (C:) 37.25 GB NTFS Healthy (System) not shaded

that volume shows only FAT
not FAT 16 or FAT 32

now if I plug in one of my flash drives
it DOES say FAT32...

31 MB FAT EISA partition is a utility partition which is present in some Dell notebooks. There is nothing on this partition but some Dell related stuff.
The next partition is 37.25 GB is NTFS which you created yourself. By creation of this partition, unfortunately you destroyed all the data on last FAT32 partition.
The hard disk size is 37.28 GB which is approximately equal to the total size of the two partitions, so there is no other partition.

I am sorry to say it is impossible to recover any data from your hard disk in any known practical manner.

Well...you could always try data-recovery software (in theory)...but the programs I am familiar with do not allow search and recovery to the same partition/drive.

Louis

Deleting old and creating new partition, formatting it as NTFS (if full format was done then the entire partition was overwritten) and then overwriting it with Windows files (and possibly other software files) leaves very little to hope.

ok
but that doesn't seem quite right...
first, it's a Dell pc, not a notebook - not sure if that matters...
but when I created the new partition, I created it in an unused area, and left the other area alone
so i should not have overwritten anything...

and think I did a quick format
and have only re-installed Windows, Google toolbar, and Crap Cleaner (which I have not used yet)
no other significant files or software