Help with re-installing windows 7

[St_Maunsell]

I've just re-installed windows 7 and I'm not able to access my storage drive (E:) it shows up, when I right click on computer and click manage, as a system drive does anyone have a way for me to re add this back where it was without formatting my hard drive? 

[namarino]

I recently did the same thing. This was really helpful for me. Hope it helps

 

[chesleywan]

Have you installed all your drivers yet? Assuming it's a desktop, it could be connected to a third-party storage controller that requires a driver to detect connected drives.

[St_Maunsell]

What I want to be able to do is add the new drive without formatting it as I have data I want to keep

[Bonesy]

I dont mean to be rude, but could you provide a screenshot of your issue?  

As I understand it: You have an external drive that is formatted with previous system files(or personal files) that is no longer accessible.

If this appears in disk management as "unallocated" then I STRONGLY recommend a utility such as EaseUS Partition recovery, to restore the correct formatting without losing any data,

 

If this is not your issue, could you please provide any more information?

[St_Maunsell]

What I'm trying to do is be able to take my storage drive which was formerly E and mount it back into my system so that I can use it without loss of data. I've tried creating a new simple volume under E:/ and under H:/, in both cases Windows asks me to format the drive before I can do use the volume 

[swifty7]

so you're saying that windows will not assign a letter to it without asking to format it first.  Hmmmm!  that is a problem.  Try Ubuntu to see if you can access your drive.

 

I believe I've had a similar problem once and couldn't do anything about it.  You'll probably need one of those data extraction utilities to retrieve any important files you may have on it.

[St_Maunsell]

Ubuntu is an option but I want to be able to have my data on windows

[swifty7]

well!!  if ubuntu can access your drive, then backup your important data and format the drive.

[St_Maunsell]

Sadly I don't have anything to backup my data to

[swifty7]

it's not very expensive to invest on an external hdd where you can backup all of your important data.

[Speedbird]

What I'm trying to do is be able to take my storage drive which was formerly E and mount it back into my system so that I can use it without loss of data. I've tried creating a new simple volume under E:/ and under H:/, in both cases Windows asks me to format the drive before I can do use the volume 

Please provide a screenshot. It could just be that you need to reassign the drive letter.

[St_Maunsell]

I've tried reassigning the drive letter and nothing happened I still got the same error about formatting the hard drive before I can use it but I will get you a screenshot when I get a chance