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I had a toshiba satellite A200 laptop with 320 GB HDD and vista OS and I wanted to replace it with Ubuntu 12.10, but when I did that it turns out that Ubuntu erased all the data on my HDD and only showed it as 198 GB in the file system with about 120 GB just disappered

after a hard time I managed to use testdisk from the live CD to recover some of the important data from the HDD and transfered them to my PC

now what i am planning to do is:

1- install WinXp over ubuntu (keeping only XP on the laptop) and formatting the HDD to get back all the 320 GB

2- then i'll try some of the applications made for windows to recover my lost partitions (hoping it will work and i can get back my lost data )

3- after that i will upgrade to Windows 7

the problem that I'm facing now is:

when I try to install WinXP, the installer say that it can't find the HDD and the installation stops

I searched alot and some solutiuons suggests using Gparted from the LiveCD to format the HDD to NTFS and others suggests putting the HDD drivers with the XP installation CD with nLite ( which is a hard solution for me) BUT there is a solution that I found that worked for many Toshiba laptops is to get into the BIOS menu. Then scroll down to the SATA option and change it from ACHI to Compatibility then I can install WinXP and then change it back after that

SO now PLEASE PLEASE help my with simple steps to do what I am planning to do and get back my laptop running Windows with all my 320 GB and working as it was without problems

and please note that I'm not an expert and English is not my first language :(

thanks in advance for your much appreciated help.

Totally newbie
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  • This isn't really an Ubuntu question, is it? You want to wipe your HDD and install Windows 7. Any 'Windows + BIOS' issues are off-topic here, and the first issue is a dupe of this question. Also, all of this writing to the disk greatly reduces your chances of recovering any more data. You should read this Ask Ubuntu question first, then move it to a Windows forum if that isn't for you. – Tom Brossman Apr 30 '13 at 11:56
  • i am asking here because I think Ubuntu is the reason that I cannot install WinXP and because I want a safe way to get back all the space on my HDD that Ubuntu have formated – Totally newbie Apr 30 '13 at 11:59

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