A
Achim Nolcken Lohse
A few days ago I embarked on the nail-biting task of cleaning house on
my wife's work computer. The main problem was that I had configured
the C: drive as FAT16/540MB, and desperately needed to switch it to
FAT32/1.5GB. Win98SE wouldn't convert the drive to FAT32 ("too
small"), so I had to resize the partition.
In the past, I've had miserable results with PowerQuest Partition
Magic, and some successes with Zeleps Partition Resizer, so I decided
to give the latter first shot. However, for prudence's sake, I dug up
an old copy of PowerQuest Drive Image 2.0 (circa 1999) given me by a
friend, and never used before, and saved an image of the partition.
This turned out to be a smart move.
When I ran Zeleps Presizer 134 it gave me a couple of error messages
and a warning, all of which were hard to understand:
Error 8 FAT partition 2 damaged or not formatted.
(ok, two of my disks had unformatted portions on them, why would that
be an error?)
warning 6: FAT signature bad or missing part1 at sector 156
(huh? which disk?)
Error 6: system sector signature not found Disk 0x82 at sector 1048320
(I was able to identify this disk as the third disk)
This was followed by a strident warning against proceeding, but with
the option to do so. I chose to continue and got the graphic for the
first disk(I use this terminology because some utilities call the
first disk #1, while others call it #0). The graphic showed the disk
as 514MB and indicated that it could neither be grown nor shrunk
(despite the fact that there was another 1GB of unformatted space on
the disk).
I then fell back on PowerQuest's Drive Image 2.0, which allowed me to
delete the existing C: partition and then restore my image backup onto
a new partition using the entire 1.5GB capacity of the disk.
I subsequently ran into another problem. Win98 wouldn't convert my
resized C: partition from FAT16 to FAT32. It would commence, say it
was going to restart in MSDOS mode to do the job, then a blue screen
would flash by so quickly I couldn't read anything, and the system
would hang with a blinking cursor on the black screen of death.
I searched the WEB for help with this issue, and found nothing but a
single article from Windows Magazine, circa 1997(!), that informed me
that PowerQuest Partition Magic could not only convert FAT16 to FAT32,
but, in contradiction to the dictum of Microsoft, could also convert
FAT32 back to FAT16. So I dusted off my very dated and much despised
copy of PM401, and by golly!, it worked. I should add that this is the
only functionality I have had from PM since buying it years ago. I
should also add that it informed me that my D: drive, which I also
converted to FAT32, was, according to PM401 "unformatted". An amazing
assertion, since I've been running my Pegasus mail client, my
newreader, and Open Office from that same "unformatted" drive for some
weeks now.
Ranish Partition Manager was no help at all, telling me that my second
disk had "no active partition" and refusing to look at disks 3 and 4
at all.
The moral of this story?
a) don't trust any partition utility,they're all seriously flawed
b) don't throw any of them away, you need all the help you can get
when partion woes arise, and which one will work under a given
circumstance is a crap shoot
PS. my upgrade wasn't entirely successful. The enlarged C: drive for
some reason won't defragment (acting on a tip from the Windows Mag
article, I looked at the converted partitions, and found that the
conversion fragments them horribly). The C: drive defragmented at a
snail's pace, rewriting most of the data one cluster to four clusters
at a time. What's worse, as soon as it had been used for even a few
minutes (even without any file writes or deletions), it ended up
seriously fragmented again.
In frustration, I copied the partition to another disk immediately
after defragementing, and on the target disk, these defrag problems
disappeared. I then replaced the original 1st disk with the cloned
one, but alas, I smoked the replacement (literally - there was a nice
little puff, it was a notebook drive on one of the little circuit
board connectors, and I suspect a short on the board) during
installation, and so I'm stuck with the stuttering C: drive (it's also
one of those loud clickity-clackity drives) for the time being.
my wife's work computer. The main problem was that I had configured
the C: drive as FAT16/540MB, and desperately needed to switch it to
FAT32/1.5GB. Win98SE wouldn't convert the drive to FAT32 ("too
small"), so I had to resize the partition.
In the past, I've had miserable results with PowerQuest Partition
Magic, and some successes with Zeleps Partition Resizer, so I decided
to give the latter first shot. However, for prudence's sake, I dug up
an old copy of PowerQuest Drive Image 2.0 (circa 1999) given me by a
friend, and never used before, and saved an image of the partition.
This turned out to be a smart move.
When I ran Zeleps Presizer 134 it gave me a couple of error messages
and a warning, all of which were hard to understand:
Error 8 FAT partition 2 damaged or not formatted.
(ok, two of my disks had unformatted portions on them, why would that
be an error?)
warning 6: FAT signature bad or missing part1 at sector 156
(huh? which disk?)
Error 6: system sector signature not found Disk 0x82 at sector 1048320
(I was able to identify this disk as the third disk)
This was followed by a strident warning against proceeding, but with
the option to do so. I chose to continue and got the graphic for the
first disk(I use this terminology because some utilities call the
first disk #1, while others call it #0). The graphic showed the disk
as 514MB and indicated that it could neither be grown nor shrunk
(despite the fact that there was another 1GB of unformatted space on
the disk).
I then fell back on PowerQuest's Drive Image 2.0, which allowed me to
delete the existing C: partition and then restore my image backup onto
a new partition using the entire 1.5GB capacity of the disk.
I subsequently ran into another problem. Win98 wouldn't convert my
resized C: partition from FAT16 to FAT32. It would commence, say it
was going to restart in MSDOS mode to do the job, then a blue screen
would flash by so quickly I couldn't read anything, and the system
would hang with a blinking cursor on the black screen of death.
I searched the WEB for help with this issue, and found nothing but a
single article from Windows Magazine, circa 1997(!), that informed me
that PowerQuest Partition Magic could not only convert FAT16 to FAT32,
but, in contradiction to the dictum of Microsoft, could also convert
FAT32 back to FAT16. So I dusted off my very dated and much despised
copy of PM401, and by golly!, it worked. I should add that this is the
only functionality I have had from PM since buying it years ago. I
should also add that it informed me that my D: drive, which I also
converted to FAT32, was, according to PM401 "unformatted". An amazing
assertion, since I've been running my Pegasus mail client, my
newreader, and Open Office from that same "unformatted" drive for some
weeks now.
Ranish Partition Manager was no help at all, telling me that my second
disk had "no active partition" and refusing to look at disks 3 and 4
at all.
The moral of this story?
a) don't trust any partition utility,they're all seriously flawed
b) don't throw any of them away, you need all the help you can get
when partion woes arise, and which one will work under a given
circumstance is a crap shoot
PS. my upgrade wasn't entirely successful. The enlarged C: drive for
some reason won't defragment (acting on a tip from the Windows Mag
article, I looked at the converted partitions, and found that the
conversion fragments them horribly). The C: drive defragmented at a
snail's pace, rewriting most of the data one cluster to four clusters
at a time. What's worse, as soon as it had been used for even a few
minutes (even without any file writes or deletions), it ended up
seriously fragmented again.
In frustration, I copied the partition to another disk immediately
after defragementing, and on the target disk, these defrag problems
disappeared. I then replaced the original 1st disk with the cloned
one, but alas, I smoked the replacement (literally - there was a nice
little puff, it was a notebook drive on one of the little circuit
board connectors, and I suspect a short on the board) during
installation, and so I'm stuck with the stuttering C: drive (it's also
one of those loud clickity-clackity drives) for the time being.