Windows shows empty partitions after server FORMAT

5 disks were already masked and used by this server before, they decide to format this server ,after the format and new windows installation, three disks were accessible with the old data , but the remaining two disks were presented in black at disk management console , I need the old data on these two disks without going to format .

Got it ?

not sure i am clear what you are trying to do. You presented 2 new disks to the host and trying to format them ?

The version of NTFS that shipped with Windows 2000 is compatible with Windows 2003 so the partitions should show up and you should only need to mount the partitions. If a partition is not visible on the LUN then it appears that it could have been deleted during the rebuild of the server.

make sense. Were disks taken away from the host while it was being rebuild ? Could they be accidentally formatted during OS install ?  What you are describing should not happen, you will need to re-assign the drive letter but definitely the data should be intact.  Very strange

Ya very strange! , the server was formatted by server owner, no disks taken away from the host at that time.

i can assure it was not our array that did it. only the OS, an application, or a user will delete partitions. i have seen a few customers that rebuilt an OS with the fiber cables still attached to the hba's and they had similar issues!!! and it was on windows 2003... i can't explain why it happened. but i would always reload the OS with the fiber unplugged. once the OS is up running then connect to the SAN.  microsoft should be able to rebuild the partition table easily enough, espically if you only had 1 partition for the entire disk. but they should read further into the disk where your data resided and if the sectors show all zeroes then it's very likely a format was also done and the data is gone!!!! also windows does not log any disk activity like this!!!! if a user deletes or formats a partitiong that is not in the event logs or any other logs so even if you wanted to track down when it was done you couldn't ,  of course nothing is logged like this during an OS reinstall either.

i don't remember if it was particular service pack but i remember booting of win2k3 cd and it would automatically load qlogic drivers so i could actually see my SAN attached drives.  I can see somebody going blindly and start deleting partitions thinking they are on the local drive. Ouch ..

Agreed, this had to have been the server admin doing something wrong during the rebuild.

Thanks guys,

We opened a ticket with EMC support "seems" we have an issue with MBR.