Second Hard drive appears unformatted after clean install of WIndows XP Home

So there are actually TWO physical drives in this machine?  I know you said two drives, but there could be two drive partitions on one physical disk.

How did you drop the boot partition?  Did you use fdisk or did you use something else?

This is a default characteristic.  XP install does not address multiple harddrives.  Simply open system managaer by right click on my computer select manage.  go to disk manager and you can right click on the HDD d: then choose format.

Open my computer and Right click the D drive and click format

I think what they want is to be able to access the data that WAS on drive D, not format it.  

"drive D: which is the second hard drive appears to be unformatted." This made me think they wanted it to be formatted. but you may be correct.

Yes, if you are tryin to get the D partition back, you might need to contact a data recovery company or try
http://www.runtime.org
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com

There really is 'no' way to delete the primay partition without clearing the second partition which is what you did.

The data will likely still be there, but you will need to use some data recovery utilities to rebuild the D partition like Get Data Back( www.runtime.org) or hook the drive up via a USB cable to another computer and let a company like Ontrack recover it for you at an expensive cost via the internet.

Actually there are two physical hard drives in the system.  

In the WIndows XP home install program it noted on the screen that there were two partitions.  One, drive C with the system on in other drive, drive D which had data on it.   Both physical drives formatted NTFS.

During the install I opted to clear the partition with windows on it.   It re installed windows and then when the system rebooted it seemed fine until I tried to open drive D.

It asked me if I wanted to reform.  In computer management, in the disk management tool it is a basic, healthy drive D with RAW as the file system.  
 

So on the first physical drive, you had two partitions?

You wiped partition 1, and reinstalled Win XP on it, right?
You have not done anything with the D partition on the first pysical drive?
If so disconnect the second physical drive( with the power off) just to make sure you do not mess up any of it's data.

(Your sure that there is no data on the second partition you need, correct?)
If so, then go into the disk manager and recreate the D partition, deleting the existing D partition, recreate it. After doing this you should be able to format it no problem...

After setting up the first physical drive you can shut it down and re-attach the second physical drive.
You might need to reassign driver letters etc too which you can do via the disk manager.

Oh, and yes I would like to get the data back.  I know I can format it but that is where be copied all of our files from the main partition (e.g., documents) before we did the install

On this sentence:
"However, when the system was rebooted after the install was completed, drive D: which is the second hard drive appears to be unformatted.  Is there anything that we can do about this?   We only cleared one partition, changed no hardware or bios settings during the processs."

You really need to be more clear asking questions like this as there is no way for anyone to tell if you are trying to recover data, or if you are only having a problem setting up the D partition.

omg, then don't do what I said the second time.

Do what I said the first time.

Do not use anything else other than data recovery tools at this point as you likely will lose all your data.

repeating here for clarity:
Yes, if you are tryin to get the D partition back, you might need to contact a data recovery company or try
http://www.runtime.org
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com

There really is 'no' way to delete the primay partition without clearing the second partition which is what you did.

The data will likely still be there, but you will need to use some data recovery utilities to rebuild the D partition like Get Data Back( www.runtime.org) or hook the drive up via a USB cable to another computer and let a company like Ontrack recover it for you at an expensive cost via the internet.

OK,
I have a computer with two physical hard disks.  They are drive C: and D:  Both were formatted with NTFS and were working properly.  Drive C was the active, boot partition running Windows XP home.  Drive D: was a data drive with 200 GB data.  

We felt the need to reinstall windows as it was acting weird.

When we were running the install procedure, we opted to remove the active partiion before letting the installation procedure get started.   We did not delete the parttion on the other hard disk (D:)

When the install was done, the computer booted, and drive D not available.  It said that it needed to be formatted when I double clicked on it in my computer.  In computer management, in the disk management seciion, the drive is reported as being drive D:. healthy, and having a file system of RAW.

The drive D: was fine before the installation procedure and after the installation proceure it is not accessable any more.

I want to reverse this procedure so that the drive is available again and not have to format it again because I want to keep the data.

Thanks

The computer has two physical hard disks

"I want to reverse this procedure so that the drive is available again and not have to format it again because I want to keep the data."

Does this mean you formatted it?

If you have not done anything with the second physical drive D, then it should never have become inaccessable after reinstalling Windows XP on the first physical drive.

What I would do at this point, is try running
http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm
and see if it finds the deleted physical D drv's partition and folders...restore these files to your physical C drive--do not restore any data to the drive you are attempting to recover data from.

You've got two physical disks.  So

Try GetDataBack http://www.runtime.org/  Free to try.  If it sees the missing files you pay for full functionality.

Also look at PCInspector http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm and Recuva http://www.recuva.com/

Both are free.

I'd try GetDataBack.  If it sees your files then try the free ones.  If they work you save money.

Note that GetDataBack was originally recommended by WiReDNeT above.

Well, the situation has been resolved although I do not understand it.  

I did reboot the computer a few times, reseat the cables, boot the computer withouth the drive installed but it made no difference.

While we were trying to figure this out we installed all the current sercurity patches and SP3.

We installed PC instpector and turned off the computer, re hooked the hard drive back up and just for fun tried to access the drive before even running the recovery software.

Well, it worked.

The hard drive was installed and formatted originally on the computer with Windows XP home with some of the patches and updates installed.  Perhaps all it needed was to have all the windows updates installed