Converting RAW HD Format to XP NTFS with out losing any data

[fobb198]

All:
Recently my secondary HD went on the fritz. On day i
booted my PC and tried to access my secondary drive and
it gave me th following Error " The Disk in drive D is
not formatted. Do you want to format now?" And of course
i clicked no because there is dataon there that i would
like to keep. The secondary drive was previously an 40GB
XP NTFS Partition. So i booted to dos to see if i could
access the drive. I had to set it to master but i was
able to boot to DOS and get into the drive. So I know it
is not a complete lost cause. Then i booted back into
windows XP, the drive shows up in "my computer" and under
the propities of the drive show it is in "RAW" format. So
I took the next logical step and looked under the Windows
disk utility and then in Partition magic. they both show
it as un formatted and will not allow me to just convert
the partition over to NTFS with out formatting the entire
HD. So i then did a little research i ran across and
found a Dos command that would convert a partition from
raw to ntsf with out loosing any data... So i then typed
at the c:/> prompt "convert d: /fs:ntfs" sevral articles
i red said that it works but the responce i kept receving
was " 'convert' is not recognized as an internal or
external command, operable program or batch file. So i
then downloades sevral drive recovery programs which did
not work properly since they were demos. Short of cutting
my losses and starting over fron scratch What should I
do?

 

[Guest]

-----Original Message-----
All:
Recently my secondary HD went on the fritz. On day i
booted my PC and tried to access my secondary drive and
it gave me th following Error " The Disk in drive D is
not formatted. Do you want to format now?" And of course
i clicked no because there is dataon there that i would
like to keep. The secondary drive was previously an 40GB
XP NTFS Partition. So i booted to dos to see if i could
access the drive. I had to set it to master but i was
able to boot to DOS and get into the drive. So I know it
is not a complete lost cause. Then i booted back into
windows XP, the drive shows up in "my computer" and under
the propities of the drive show it is in "RAW" format. So
I took the next logical step and looked under the Windows
disk utility and then in Partition magic. they both show
it as un formatted and will not allow me to just convert
the partition over to NTFS with out formatting the entire
HD. So i then did a little research i ran across and
found a Dos command that would convert a partition from
raw to ntsf with out loosing any data... So i then typed
at the c:/> prompt "convert d: /fs:ntfs" sevral articles
i red said that it works but the responce i kept receving
was " 'convert' is not recognized as an internal or
external command, operable program or batch file. So i
then downloades sevral drive recovery programs which did
not work properly since they were demos. Short of cutting
my losses and starting over fron scratch What should I
do?
.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, fobb198.

Short of cutting
my losses and starting over fron scratch What should I
do?

As they say, "When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!" :>(

Don't use DOS tools to try to repair your NTFS volume. When you must do
gut-level surgery on WinXP, boot from the WinXP CD-ROM, choose the Repair
option to enter the Recovery Console, and use its DOS-like interface. But
be sure to read the instructions or Help for the Recovery Console; even
though it looks familiar, it is NOT DOS.

XP NTFS Partition. So i booted to dos to see if i could
access the drive. I had to set it to master but i was
able to boot to DOS and get into the drive.

What do you mean by "get into the drive"? If it is NTFS, you should not
have been able to do anything from MS-DOS but just recognize that the
"non-DOS" volume exists. There is at least one third-party program that
lets you read (for free) and write (for a fee) NTFS from DOS, but you didn't
mention such a program. True MS-DOS cannot read, write or even SEE an NTFS
volume, and it cannot convert any volume into NTFS. In WinXP, we can open a
"DOS" window, which is an emulation of MS-DOS, rather than true MS-DOS.
"DOS" programs running in this "DOS" window can see and manipulate NTFS.
This (run convert.exe in a WinXP "DOS" window) is the usual way to convert a
volume from FAT to NTFS.

But it can't convert RAW to NTFS. Raw means that, so far as the system can
tell, the volume hasn't been formatted at all, so there's no format to
convert FROM. The only recourse, normally, is to format the volume.

So i then did a little research i ran across and
found a Dos command that would convert a partition from
raw to ntsf with out loosing any data...

WOW! Where did you find this little jewel?

So i then typed
at the c:/> prompt "convert d: /fs:ntfs" sevral articles
i red said that it works

Can you point us to those articles? I think you have misunderstood
something here. Convert.exe is a fine tool for converting from FAT or FAT32
to NTFS, but I can't find anything that says it can be used to convert from
RAW. And, since it will not convert into anything but NTFS, it is useless
when you are booted into MS-DOS. I'm not aware of a version of convert.exe
for MS-DOS or Win9x/ME.

You haven't yet mentioned Disk Management. Yes, you did say you "looked
under the Windows disk utility", but you didn't say which one. If you are
not familiar with Disk Management, you can access it in several ways,
including from the Run prompt: diskmgmt.msc The Help file here is very
good; it lists several possible Disk Status messages, including Not
Initialized, Foreign and Failed, but not Raw.

Your best bet now may be to use a file recovery program (R-Studio, $70 from
www.r-tt.com last year, worked for me) to get all the data you can, then use
Disk Management to repartition and/or reformat the drive.

RC

 

[Bob Harris]

Since you have reason to believe that there is valuable data on the drive,
do NOT re-format it, and do NOT try to convert format at this time.
Instead, hope that the problem is as simple as a bad master boot record.
That can be fixed by using the XP CDROM to enter the "recovery console"
Type HELP for a list of commands. Type a command followed by /? for more
info. You probably want the FIXMBR command.

Here are some links to the recovery console:

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/win_xp_rec.htm



http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/wxprcons.htm



http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy33.htm