(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I have a 6-gig removable usb drive (solid state). Against my better judgment I have been trying to put XP on this 80-gig Maxtor drive. The first time I installed XP, Windows came up without video features and networking, meaning no wallpapers and no possible connection to internet (even with correct device drivers). So I wiped the 80-GB hdd drive, despite it being persistently labeled "atapi [MBR]". Those difficulties are really beside the point. During the struggle, the usb drive became inaccessible. It's a large usb drive, and you can well imagine that it contains much valuable data, so I would rather not format it, as Windows insists. The file system is FAT32. Is there any way to recover the drive, or at least the data, when Puppy no longer sees the drive, and Windows wants to format it?

If you look at the device in Gparted, what does it show?

/dev/sdc 5.72 GiB unallocated, in gray

EDIT: You know, I think I inadvertently wiped this drive, believing it to be a persistent unwanted partition. Nevermind, I guess. I used the usual command to wipe the main hdd drive, "C:\wipe 0" and that utility chose to wipe the usb drive instead of the hdd drive. The reason I remember this is that the wipe was unusually rapid. Oh well. No big deal, I'm backed up, mostly.