hi please i am new to ubuntu. i installed it from windows xp as dual boot on my 2nd hard drive. i have 3 hard drives, 2 internal and one external. in first hard drive i installed XP and in 2nd i installed ubuntu and in my external HDD i store my all Data for backup. now i am not sure what i did but my external hard drive has a lot of problems. first it only shows 10 mb with FAT file system in explorer in XP windows and in disk management it shows the correct size about 47.GB as actual size is 500GB and in ubuntu there are very wierd named files like "â=+FrÅ┤
.C" and "π∙^u▀?a .█x" and many more.. please help me this drive has all of my data about 350+GB ...i really appericiate of your help.

oh GOD i will have big loss with this please help

Edit: when i see in drive properties i see File System as vfat(F12) of this drive...please help me ...thanks


first thing i install windows on first drive and i remove my external drive from computer and untill i installed ubuntu on my second hard drive i never connected it to computer. once i connect it to computer and booted to ubuntu and i was able to see the external drive in ubuntu. but suddenly when i went to xp i never see it again...only 10 mb with unknown files. and there was no problem of power here. and i don't think i did some sort of partation. i did install some software though via ubuntu package installer . and i did mount and unmount that drive. i am using USB connector with its own power cable connector..this hard disk is about 5-6months older.

please in this hard disk are some very important files...thanks for any help