Comp geeks, need help

[BigBear]

Guy, where are you?! lol

So I've been having a few comp probs, BSODS etc. Turns out one is a bad hard drive. So I was going to reformat the whole computer (it needs it anyways), pull the HD, and start with a fresh version of Windows.

I was in disk management and accidentally hit delete volume and now can't find my E drive... any way to recover that, cause it's not the problem drive...?

[BigBear]

and if someone would like to come over or call, etc so I can explain more... feel free to PM or whatever.. I'm not too tech savvy, so use layman terms, lol.

[J]

I have the recovery software/equipment, but I'm a bit of a drive from you. Don't write back over it any!!!! Leave it as is. If it is just a lost partition and you haven't overwritten it at all, you should be able to recover almost all of the data.

[BigBear]

Well I wanted to reformat the drive anyways... but now I can't even find the drive on the computer... if I pull it out and reinsert it, will the comp pick it up?

EDIT: All my data is backed up on an external drive. No worries about losing anything.

[J]

Check your bios, usually F1, F2, F12, or Del key right when it starts booting, make sure you can see it there. If so, slap in your windows disk and start installing, it should find the drive during setup.

[BigBear]

ok, I see it in Bios... but I still need to reformat everything... lol, I'm so confused right now...

EDIT: Good thing I have a work laptop to write all this on, or I'd be royally screwed...

[Delfuego]

Dont touch it! The more you mess with it the harder it will be to recover any data from it. If you are up near Denver area I can help. PM me if you are interested.

Edit:
Sorry, I thought you need to recover it...

[Teufelhund]

Check your bios, usually F1, F2, F12, or Del key right when it starts booting, make sure you can see it there. If so, slap in your windows disk and start installing, it should find the drive during setup.

This! If you have multiple drives in the machine, make sure you have some way to identify them (different manufacturers, significant size difference) so you don't accidentally format the wrong one. Remove the extras before you start if possible.

[cfortune]

If you're not worried about the data on that drive you hit delete on, simply go back into disk management, right click on the drive (should have a black line across the top versus a blue line), and select "new" i believe (been a while since I've had to mess with this stuff since I haven't been building servers lately). Then go through the wizard. This will re-partition the drive and format it for you. It'll then get assigned a new drive letter and be accessible via Explorer. Your data WILL be gone though.

[BigBear]

I have someone comin' over later. Thanks for the help... I really should learn this stuff... lol