Help!!!!!! NTFS switched to FAT32

[Jimbo]

Help,

I have done something very stupid and hope there is a way to correct it. My
system (call is system A) has 2 hard drives both on the NTFS format. My C
drive is the boot drive and the D drive is the slave. I removed the D drive
and tried to place it into my other computer(call it system B) that also had
2 drives with the same set up, C boot/D slave. What I did not know was that
the D drive in system B was FAT32. After placing the D drive (NTFS) into
system B and trying to transfer a file(which of course did not work) I
placed it back into system A. On reboot the system wants to run disk check
on D drive and now says it is FAT32.

Here is the problem. I have data (pictures) on there which I do not want to
loose if possible. I have not allowed the system to run the disk check as I
am afraid it will delete the files. Is this true or if I let the disk check
run will it fix things. The screen fills with files checking saying it is
truncating some and then seems to fall in to correcting others.

I have also seen that you can convert FAT32 to NTFS should I try that first?

Elrodo

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP]

Help,

I have done something very stupid and hope there is a way to correct
it. My system (call is system A) has 2 hard drives both on the NTFS
format. My C drive is the boot drive and the D drive is the slave.
I removed the D drive and tried to place it into my other
computer(call it system B) that also had 2 drives with the same set
up, C boot/D slave. What I did not know was that the D drive in
system B was FAT32. After placing the D drive (NTFS) into system B
and trying to transfer a file(which of course did not work) I placed
it back into system A. On reboot the system wants to run disk check
on D drive and now says it is FAT32.

Here is the problem. I have data (pictures) on there which I do not
want to loose if possible. I have not allowed the system to run the
disk check as I am afraid it will delete the files. Is this true or
if I let the disk check run will it fix things. The screen fills
with files checking saying it is truncating some and then seems to
fall in to correcting others.

I have also seen that you can convert FAT32 to NTFS should I try that
first?

Elrodo

WindowsXP reads FAT32 drives without any problem. Something else is wrong.

--
Frank Saunders, MS-MVP, IE/OE
Please respond in Newsgroup only. Do not send email
http://www.fjsmjs.com
Protect your PC
http://www.microsoft.com./athome/security/protect/default.aspx

 

[Jimbo]

Should I let the process of checking file system proceed to see if it will
correct things? As of now the data is still on the drive but I cannot open
anything and it is looks like hieroglyphics in syntax that is unreadable. I
do not know if the checking file system on reboot will remove data? Do you?

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

There is nothing in what you did that would convert the drive to FAT32. What
you *should* do at this point is run the XP disk checker from a command
prompt. Click start/run and type cmd, then click ok. From the prompt, run
"chkdsk <drive>: /r". If the drive cannot be dismounted at this point,
follow the prompts for the check to be done when the system reboots.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP\)]

What do you mean "It did not work?" The file system has nothing to do with
the ability to move files from NTFS to FAT32 and visa versa. A Windows 9x
system however, cannot see NTFS so if you moved the hard drive to a computer
with Windows 9x as opposed to another system with Windows XP installed, that
would be the issue.

Other than that, please explain.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

I have done something very stupid and hope there is a way to
correct
it. My system (call is system A) has 2 hard drives both on
the NTFS
format. My C drive is the boot drive and the D drive is the
slave.
I removed the D drive and tried to place it into my other
computer(call it system B) that also had 2 drives with the same
set
up, C boot/D slave. What I did not know was that the D drive in
system B was FAT32. After placing the D drive (NTFS) into
system B
and trying to transfer a file(which of course did not work)

Why do you say "of course"? Is System B Windows XP? Windows XP
can read and write any combination of NTFS, FAT32, FAT16, and
FAT12, regardless of what file system it itself is installed on.

If System B is Windows 98 or Me, it wouldn't have been able to
even see the NTFS drive, but it couldn't have converted it to
FAT32. See below.

I placed
it back into system A. On reboot the system wants to run disk
check
on D drive and now says it is FAT32.

I'm not sure I have this right. Are you saying that you removed
an NTFS drive from one computer, moved it to a second computer,
where you did nothing to it (you tried to write to it but it
somehow failed), then moved it back to the original, where it
somehow mysteriously became FAT32?

If that's what you're saying, something is very much wrong. The
situation as you describe it can't possibly be true. Drives don't
change from NTFS to FAT32 on their own. In fact, you can't even
convert from NTFS to FAT32 within Windows if you wanted to (you
can convert in the other direction--FAT32 to NTFS--but not NTFS
to FAT32).

Either you're wrong and the drive wasn't NTFS in the first place
or it's not FAT32 now.

Here is the problem. I have data (pictures) on there which I
do not
want to loose if possible. I have not allowed the system to
run the
disk check as I am afraid it will delete the files. Is this
true or
if I let the disk check run will it fix things. The screen
fills
with files checking saying it is truncating some and then seems
to
fall in to correcting others.

I have also seen that you can convert FAT32 to NTFS should I
try that
first?

No. First of all, what file system it's in is completely
irrelevant to Windows XP. The first thing you should do is to
verify exactly what the situation is. Take a deep breath, and go
back over exactly what happened, and try to recollect what you
did. Remember the situation as you described it can't possibly be
true. Be sure that it's no longer NTFS (tell us how you know).
Answer the questions above and post back.

 

[Bob Harris]

I agree with severla of the other replies, merely moving a disk to another
computer should not change its format, unless you used a potent system
command like FORMAT, DELPART, FDISK, etc, or a third-party tool like
Partition Magic.

It is possible that the master boot record was damaged, although exactly how
I can not say. If that is the problem, then XP could be confused as to the
format. You might try running the FIXMBR command from the XP recovery
console, but be very careful to run it on D:\ not on C:\. You might even
want to unplug the C:\ drive to be certain that any commands in the recovery
console are acting upon D:\, which incidentally, might be called C:\ in the
recovery console, if the first C:\ is removed.

There are also some third-party programs that claim to be able to fix
lost/confused partitions. Try a web search on "fix partition".

But, since your data may be close to oblivion, it might be a good idea to
make a disk image, before attempting to "fix" things. A powerful imaging
program, like GHOST, can do a bit-by-bit copy, even copying the boot record.
If the "fix" fails, then you can restore the disk to its current condition,
and try something else. But, note that a full image includes all the blank
space on thre disk, and even with compression might be half the size of the
disk. So, about the only place you could use to store it would be another
hard drive. Fortunately GHOST 2003 can use external USB disks as a storage
location.

 

[D.Currie]

Help,

I have done something very stupid and hope there is a way to correct it.
My
system (call is system A) has 2 hard drives both on the NTFS format. My
C
drive is the boot drive and the D drive is the slave. I removed the D
drive
and tried to place it into my other computer(call it system B) that also
had
2 drives with the same set up, C boot/D slave. What I did not know was
that
the D drive in system B was FAT32. After placing the D drive (NTFS) into
system B and trying to transfer a file(which of course did not work) I
placed it back into system A. On reboot the system wants to run disk
check
on D drive and now says it is FAT32.

Here is the problem. I have data (pictures) on there which I do not want
to
loose if possible. I have not allowed the system to run the disk check as
I
am afraid it will delete the files. Is this true or if I let the disk
check
run will it fix things. The screen fills with files checking saying it is
truncating some and then seems to fall in to correcting others.

I have also seen that you can convert FAT32 to NTFS should I try that
first?

Elrodo

Don't run the disk check until you've backed up the drive. There's a chance
that a disk check might fix everything, and there's a chance that it will
"fix" the files by converting them all to .chk files. And from there,
recovery gets pretty tedious and sometimes impossible.

Needless to say, it's impossible to convert a drive from NTFS to FAT32 just
by moving it from one computer to another, as others have mentioned.
Something else has happened that has messed up the partition or file table.
The data is all there, but the computer doesn't know how to find it or read
it any more.

There are a lot of things you could try, but with each one, there's a chance
it could make the situation worse, so at this point it depends on how
important that data is and how much time or money you want to spend on
retrieving the data.

There are plenty of file recovery programs available. Some are free, some
are expensive. You could also take the drive to a data recovery company and
expect to spend between $200 - $2000.

If you want to fiddle with the drive yourself, you can try to give yourself
a failsafe by copying the drive first. Whether that's going to work or not
is iffy -- some backup/clone programs will balk at copying a drive that's
not behaving properly.

After that, you might try putting the drive into another computer, to see if
it can read it. You never know. It might work. Then you can try some of the
data recovery programs. Just be aware that any changes you make to the drive
are just as likely to make things worse, so try the non-invasive ways of
getting the data before you start running utilities on the drive that will
attempt repairs.

When all this is sorted out, you might want to consider regular backups of
things you don't want to lose, like those photos. You never know when a disk
crash or virus or something else could damage your files, and there really
isn't any hard drive that's going to be 100% safe for storage.

 

[Nick Burns]

You can have fat32 on one drive and ntfs on another.

 

[D.Currie]

You can have fat32 on one drive and ntfs on another.

While that's certainly true, what does that have to do with either what I
said or what the original problem was? Not trying to be contrary, just
wondering how that fact fits in.