Hard Disk file system no longer seen by XP- MSVP's please help???

  • Thread starter Thread starter McGrandpa
  • Start date Start date
M

McGrandpa

I've been in the xp help and support ng with this interesting problem.
No solution
so far at all.

After a 'power glitch' (loose power cable 'Y' adapter), I suddenly found
in
Explorer that the 60g WD HD I use for my data drive in XP is now shown
as 'Local Disk (G:)' and when I click on it, XP reports this drive isn't
formatted,
format now? Er...NO! Cancel!

This actually happened Friday evening, 18July, and I didn't notice it
until Saturday
morning. Device manager has no problems at all. The drive is there and
working
properly. XP simply won't read or reinitialize and reread the drive
file system.
I've uninstalled this drive, then restarted and it found the drive ok,
but no file system
on it.

DOS 6.22 has no problem with this drives file system. W98SE was
installed
on this drive and never worked right with this rig, but will still boot
into safe mode.
Even though XP won't recognise the file system, DOS and 98SE do, and
both old
installations of DOS/98SE will boot from this drive right now.
I have about 33 gigs of data on the drive I really want to recover. Ok,
so I've
been doing this with booting that drive to 98SE safe mode and copying
files
from that drive to a 40g 'extra' data drive that XP does see fine. I
select a large
chunk of folders, 'copy' then 'paste' to the 40gig. It
works...slow...overnight slow.
Compatability mode.

The thing is, the file system, FAT32, does exist and is viable or it
wouldn't boot and
I wouldn't be able to salvage my files from it. My big question is, WHY
won't XP
see the file system on it now? There must be some tiny thing I'm not
seeing that
I can do to get XP to 'find' that file system again. Of course, I've no
idea what did
get changed to cause XP to not see that FAT32 file system suddenly.
This seems
like it would be a really simple problem. I'm sure I'm not the only
one who has
run into this same thing. I'd like to find out what it is that caused
it and what I can
do to get XP to read it again. reg hack? Something in the 60g MBR? I
don't know.

Thanks folks!
Mike
McGrandpa
 
McGrandpa said:
After a 'power glitch' (loose power cable 'Y' adapter), I suddenly found
in
Explorer that the 60g WD HD I use for my data drive in XP is now shown
as 'Local Disk (G:)' and when I click on it, XP reports this drive isn't
formatted,
format now? Er...NO! Cancel!
Click to expand...

Look via Control Panel - Admin Tools - Computer Management, select Disk
Management and look lower right for the graphic of the drive.

If that shows the partition as present, but 'Unknown' then the
likelihood is that something damaged the partition type byte in the
partition table.

If so, the approach I would take is to get the trial download of BootIT
NG from www.bootitng.com

Put the downloaded zip file in its own folder, extract components, run
the bootitng.exe to make a bootable floppy.

Boot that; cancel Install, thus entering Maintenance, click Partition
Work.

Select the drive on the left, then the partition and click Properties.
There you can select the Partition type it ought to be (either FAT 32 or
HPFS/NTFS) and if there is an Unhide button, click that - OK out and
see.

If that does not do it, or if the partition does not even show in Disk
Management, get the free tool MBRWORK from the same site, put it on a
DOS boot floppy, boot and run it.

USe the commands
7 to work with multiple drives and select the one to handle
1 to back up current state
3 then 4 to delete the present state
you will then be able to use
A
to search out partitions and build a new partition table


--
Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)
Bournemouth, U.K. (e-mail address removed)

Alex, thanks for that. But er, did you read the part where DOS and 98SE
*do* see it, work in it, and FDisk also sees this drive (from a booted
floppy)
and reports it as ok, Fat32, Active, 100% allocated. From a DOS boot
Fdisk, this drive looks perfectly normal. From DOS boot, Chckdsk /f
says
no problems. From 98SE Safe Mode, Scandisk says it's ok, no errors
found.
SO. Why won't XP see the file system? Everything from an XP boot says
it
is a RAW file system. Whatever that is.
Now, if I do all this stuff, is that going to screw up DOS/98SE from
running on
this drive?
Thanks!
McG.
 
McGrandpa said:
is a RAW file system. Whatever that is.
Now, if I do all this stuff, is that going to screw up DOS/98SE from
running on
this drive?
Click to expand...

A RAW file system means that XP is not able to recognise what file
system it is - which reinforces the idea that the partition type byte is
wrong. In which case the BootIT NG approach should fix it - the other
is very much a reserve.
 
McGrandpa said:
is a RAW file system. Whatever that is.
Now, if I do all this stuff, is that going to screw up DOS/98SE from
running on
this drive?
Click to expand...

A RAW file system means that XP is not able to recognise what file
system it is - which reinforces the idea that the partition type byte is
wrong. In which case the BootIT NG approach should fix it - the other
is very much a reserve.


--
Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)
Bournemouth, U.K. (e-mail address removed)

Okie dokie...be right back! :)
McG.
 
McGrandpa said:
is a RAW file system. Whatever that is.
Now, if I do all this stuff, is that going to screw up DOS/98SE from
running on
this drive?
Click to expand...

A RAW file system means that XP is not able to recognise what file
system it is - which reinforces the idea that the partition type byte is
wrong. In which case the BootIT NG approach should fix it - the other
is very much a reserve.


--
Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)
Bournemouth, U.K. (e-mail address removed)

Alex, neither one worked!
I printed the messages, followed the instructions, and was able to get
that drive to the same state it was in when I started. MBRWORK
ended about a 2 hr search to say 0 Partitions Found!
So, I loaded the saved first sector back in.
Now, this hd has never had Linux installed, has never been messed with
in any way at all for dual boot, repartitioning etc. I just formatted
it as
a Fat32 drive, then installed 98SE and it has never run fully. Both
BootitNG and MBRWork do see a fat32 partition. They see it as being
in the wrong location though. Funny that. It was formatted by 98SE
Setup.
I let Scandisk look at it all night long. There are no bad sectors.
SO. I'm
stumped. I guess being able to get all the data off it I needed was a
wonderful bonus.
If you want to puzzle this one out with me, cool, if not, I'll go ahead
and reformat
it.
Oh, I'll FDisk it first. I'll format the drive as Fat32, and use it as
data only. This
time with no opsys on it except DOS. In an emergency, that could be
real handy.
McG.
 
McGrandpa said:
A RAW file system means that XP is not able to recognise what file
system it is - which reinforces the idea that the partition type byte is
wrong. In which case the BootIT NG approach should fix it - the other
is very much a reserve.
Click to expand...

HUH?

If it is RAW, then the byte is simply a storage unit placed on the disk, and there is no other type of byte. A byte is, and will always be a byte!
 
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