My computer was running a bit sluggish so i decided to format the old whale. Now, i have 2 hardrives installed in my computer and i transfered all my important data onto the backup one, and then proceded to format BOTH of them by accident, by the time i realised i had done it, it was to late.

My question is i used the windows 7 install disc to clear the partitions for both drives.. and then re-installed windows on my main drive... Is there any way that i can get the partition back for the second drive? i have about 4 years or photos and my entire steam directory on there, not to mention everything else...

Anyone have any ideas about what i can do?

If you need additional info i am happy to explain further...

PLEASE and THANKYOU!!!!!!!!!!!!

Use a recovery program, if you havent written much data to the drive most of it should still be there. Its a tedious task though.

Just fyi, when windows deletes something it doesn't actually delete it, it just marks it as free space. So if you're trying to recover data don't go installing stuff onto the drive because it may overwrite the important data you're trying to recover.

Sounds like you had two partitions (C & D) on one physical drive an when you reinstalled, you wiped em both as during the fresh install, you said nuke it all from orbit and wiped it.

You literally just burnt your virtual house down without insurance.

You have to be pretty special to wipe two different drives on an install. I can guarantee windows won't do it without user intervention/instruction.

Or you can hit the magical let windows decide for you if it has that option (ubuntu does).

windows recommends installing with only the one drive connected, it can fuck around with other drives apparently, like you can set the boot or system partition on the wrong drive - especially if it autodetects an old windows on a secondary drive.

Yeah mine did that once. I disabled the drive in the BIOS thinking I'd be safe but when I installed windows, it ignored the BIOS completely and installed the boot loader on to the disabled drive, which I planned to remove once windows was up on the new drive and data had been copied over. Who the hell coded windows to detect a disabled drive & install a boot loader to it?