Disappearing Drive with Win2k and NTFS

[David]

I have Win2k and have a external USB 180 gig drive that is divided
into 5 logical NTFS partitions. When I started the drive today, I
noticed that one of the partitions (29.2 GB) was assigned a drive
letter but I could not access it. When I attempted a scan-disk, the
message "Can not Scan disk a RAW drive".

I used "Computer Management/Disk Management" from the control panel
to look at the partition. The bad partition is show as "Healthy" with
0 used and free space.

Any idea how to retentive this partition using the standard WIN2k
tools? If not, is there a good 3rd party program that might help?

Thanks

P.S.

I also tested the drive on a laptop computer and had the same results.

 

[Leonard Severt [MSFT]]

I have Win2k and have a external USB 180 gig drive that is divided
into 5 logical NTFS partitions. When I started the drive today, I
noticed that one of the partitions (29.2 GB) was assigned a drive
letter but I could not access it. When I attempted a scan-disk, the
message "Can not Scan disk a RAW drive".

I used "Computer Management/Disk Management" from the control panel
to look at the partition. The bad partition is show as "Healthy" with
0 used and free space.

Any idea how to retentive this partition using the standard WIN2k
tools? If not, is there a good 3rd party program that might help?

Thanks

P.S.

I also tested the drive on a laptop computer and had the same results.

This indicates a serious file system problem. Basically a RAW partition
is one that doesn't have a recognizable file system like FAT, NTFS,
CDFS, etc. If you want to recover the data from the partition then you
probably need to look at some 3rd party data recovery tool. There is not
any specific ones that I can recommend. I would scan all the partions
with a surface test to make certain you are not having a drive problem.

Leonard Severt

Microsoft Enterprise Support

 

[Al Dykes]

I have Win2k and have a external USB 180 gig drive that is divided
into 5 logical NTFS partitions. When I started the drive today, I
noticed that one of the partitions (29.2 GB) was assigned a drive
letter but I could not access it. When I attempted a scan-disk, the
message "Can not Scan disk a RAW drive".

I used "Computer Management/Disk Management" from the control panel
to look at the partition. The bad partition is show as "Healthy" with
0 used and free space.

Any idea how to retentive this partition using the standard WIN2k
tools? If not, is there a good 3rd party program that might help?

Thanks

P.S.

I also tested the drive on a laptop computer and had the same results.

I've been paying attention for Usenet postings about NTFS problems
for some time and the common thread seems to be external drives.

I wonder if some USB-IDE electronics chips aren't too cheap to be used
with anything but FAT32.