I reformatted my C drive, due to some major errors and what not. And before I did it, I was sure to save all the files I wanted on my other Hitachi HD (120 GB).

After I did that, I went ahead and reformatted my C drive, to a clean slate. Now, here's my problem.. when I go in My Computer and click on my other HD, it says it must be formatted. And when I use "Disk Manager" it also says it must erase the disk before it can use it.

So, is there any way around this? I have some very important data that I dont want to lose, and its fustrating knowing it's just sitting on the other HD.

Thanks.

Did you reinstall the Windows?
Did you, by any chance, go from XP to 98 and your 2nd drive is in NTFS format?
If so, try http://diskinternals.com/download/NTFS_Reader_Setup.zip

It's free.

Yes, I reinstalled XP... when the hard drive shows up on My Computer and Disk Manager, its operating system is "unknown". Thus making me erase the entire disk...

Try http://www.bluechillies.com/download.html?sid=27661

It's trial sftware. Says that it rescues partitions. I think it needs a floppy.

I remember one problem I had years ago with multiple drives.
3 of them.
3rd (Master on ch2) was all the sudden unformatted (or disappeared from bios, don't recall) when I changed partition formation on 1st (deleted logical drive, primary partition and created 1 Primary and active partition that concluded 100% of available space). The problem was that 3d drive also had an active primary partition. When I put it from "master" to "cable select" it reappeared, so I was able to access files (and copy them and setup partiton properly). Maybe this little story can help you (or confuse you even further).

I follow, except, please explain how I would change it to cable select...

If you tell me which model (and a brand) we're talking about here...