Converted to NTFS but got HPFS! Am I hosed?

[Tom]

I sure hope someone has an idea as to how I get out of this one...
I converted my data drive from FAT32 to NTFS using the standard
<convert -drive:- /fs:ntfs command and told it run at the next reboot of the
system. It did its checkdisk dance, rebooted, and then did the conversion.
But now the drive is gone, although the bios still shows it's all there. I
just can't access it or anything on it. Does anyone have any idea why it
would have formatted it with HPFS and how I might get it reset to NTFS? I
don't have OS/2 or NT. Using XP-Pro sp1 with all the patches and updates.
I had about 30g of stuff on that drive and would really hate to have to
reformat the dang thing. And yes, I do have a lot of it backed up, but sure
would like to know what happened

TIA

Tom

 

[S.Sengupta]

-----Original Message-----
I sure hope someone has an idea as to how I get out of this one...
I converted my data drive from FAT32 to NTFS using the standard
<convert -drive:- /fs:ntfs command and told it run at the next reboot of the
system. It did its checkdisk dance, rebooted, and then did the conversion.
But now the drive is gone, although the bios still shows it's all there. I
just can't access it or anything on it. Does anyone have any idea why it
would have formatted it with HPFS and how I might get it reset to NTFS? I
don't have OS/2 or NT. Using XP-Pro sp1 with all the patches and updates.
I had about 30g of stuff on that drive and would really hate to have to
reformat the dang thing. And yes, I do have a lot of it backed up, but sure
would like to know what happened

TIA

Tom


.

Hello!
The way it got converted to HPFS is really stange.
But you convert it to NTFS again:
You can use Windows NT's convert.exe utility to convert a
HPFS partition to NTFS. Go to the command line and type

convert <drive>: /fs:ntfs [/v]
The /v setting is an optional command that runs the
conversion in verbose mode and gives you conversion details
on a file-by-file basis.
with regards,
ssg/pronetworks.org

 

[David Candy]

Support for HPFS was removed in NT4, so XP can't access, read or make HPFS drives - though it can probably recognise them. Most likely the disk is corrupt and is ntfs but the damage makes it appear as HPFS. HPFS is a cousin to both fat and NTFS file systems.

I'd take it to a professional to be examined. Any attempt to repair make make recovery impossable. Else I'd delete it and reinstall XP.

 

[Tom]

Hello!

The way it got converted to HPFS is really stange.
But you convert it to NTFS again:
You can use Windows NT's convert.exe utility to convert a
HPFS partition to NTFS. Go to the command line and type

convert <drive>: /fs:ntfs [/v]
The /v setting is an optional command that runs the
conversion in verbose mode and gives you conversion details
on a file-by-file basis.
with regards,
ssg/pronetworks.org

Thanks for the response, but there's just a small problem I neglected to
mention in my first post: the drive can't be seen by the OS, so I can't
reset it to NTFS; I tried. In Partition Magic it's listed as "Hidden
HPFS partition." I'm going to try booting in pure DOS mode next and see if
I can't get the system to "see" the drive so I can try converting it back...
If you have any thoughts as to how I could make the drive <unhidden> I'd
sure appreciate it. I know it's there, the bios and ATA sockets report it
as being there at POST...

Tom

 

[Tom]

Support for HPFS was removed in NT4, so XP can't access, read or make HPFS
drives - though it can probably recognise them. Most likely the disk is
corrupt and is ntfs but the damage makes it appear as HPFS. HPFS is a cousin
to both fat and NTFS file systems.

I'd take it to a professional to be examined. Any attempt to repair make
make recovery impossable. Else I'd delete it and reinstall XP.
--
I have this gut feeling you're right, but am going to dink with it until I'm
convinced it's a lost cause.

Thanks.

Tom

 

[EGMcCann]

Hello!
The way it got converted to HPFS is really stange.
But you convert it to NTFS again:
You can use Windows NT's convert.exe utility to convert a
HPFS partition to NTFS. Go to the command line and type

convert <drive>: /fs:ntfs [/v]
The /v setting is an optional command that runs the
conversion in verbose mode and gives you conversion details
on a file-by-file basis.
with regards,
ssg/pronetworks.org

Thanks for the response, but there's just a small problem I neglected to
mention in my first post: the drive can't be seen by the OS, so I can't
reset it to NTFS; I tried. In Partition Magic it's listed as "Hidden
HPFS partition." I'm going to try booting in pure DOS mode next and see if
I can't get the system to "see" the drive so I can try converting it back...
If you have any thoughts as to how I could make the drive <unhidden> I'd
sure appreciate it. I know it's there, the bios and ATA sockets report it
as being there at POST...

Partition Magic *used* to be able to convert them - it did years ago when I
was running OS/2, at least. Can it not do so any more?

 

[Al Dykes]

Support for HPFS was removed in NT4, so XP can't access, read or make =
HPFS drives - though it can probably recognise them. Most likely the =
disk is corrupt and is ntfs but the damage makes it appear as HPFS. HPFS =
is a cousin to both fat and NTFS file systems.

I'd take it to a professional to be examined. Any attempt to repair make =
make recovery impossable. Else I'd delete it and reinstall XP.
--=20

Got Linux ;-)

Assuming it really is a valid data in a valid hpfs file system,
Linux can read it. If your XP has dropped support for XP I
don't see how convert could have worked. It sounds to me like
it's a trashed file system.

There's one way to find out, a CDROM-bootable Linux called Knoppix
will safely boot and show you all the partitions on the machine.
PC file systems (FAT,FAT32,NTFS,HPFS) are mounted read-only
and can be browsed or copied. Even if you don't know Unix
this is fairly easy.

If your files are intact you can recover them this way;

Plug a temporary disk onto the machine, format it as FAT32, and boot
the Knoppix CD. You'll have to futz around a little to get root
privilages to mount the temp file system as writable (Knoppix, by
design, makes it _very_ hard for you to write on your PC files.)
Once you've gotten this far you can copy all yoiur hpfs files
to a fat32 disk . (Liux can read ntfs but afaik the drivers
are still a work in progress and I wouldn't trust them to write
a file system.)

You can download an ISO image of Knoppix from,
http://linuxiso.org/download.php/327/KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-07-26-EN.iso
Burn it as an ISO image and boot it. You'll need about 256MB to
load Knoppix (it runs in ram.)

To be fair, if you've never played with unix get help from someone
who has. The price may be a beer, and having to listen to him
try to convert you to Linux.