How do I format a RAW hard drive partition back to NTFS?

[Guest]

The second partition on my slave hard drive (Drive D under XP Pro) decided a
few days ago that it was going to become a RAW partition... Now I can't
figure out how to format it back to an NTFS partition because right now it
has no format to convert from. Saving the data that was on the partition
isn't crucial to me since the majority of it was backed up on CDs or savable
by Norton GoBack. But I would like to have my partition readable again since
it's 50 GB in size... Is there any way to do this without reformatting the
whole drive or with a useful freeware utility? I don't have a floppy drive,
but I do have a USB drive, CD-RW, DVD-R, and card drives.

Here's my setup if it can be of any help:

HDD 1: WD 40GB
Partition 1: 33.54GB, FAT32, home of Win98SE, Drive F in XP, Drive C in 98SE
Partition 2: 3.72GB, FAT32, file backup, Drive M in XP, Drive D in 98SE

HDD2: Seagate 120GB
Partition 1: 55.89GB, NTFS, home of WinXP Pro SP2, Drive C in XP
Partition 2: 50.04GB, NTFS, <== former file storage space, now RAW, Drive D
in XP
Partition 3: 5.85GB, FAT32, OEM Recovery Partition, Drive E in XP

Thanks in advance for any advice and help,

Charissa

 

[Guest]

Delete the "Raw" partition and then create a new partition. then you will be
able to format!!

 

[guestuser]

I could be (it's a 50/50 chance) wrong, but I think you can just stick the
Windows CD in and partition from there. Booting from the CD, of course.
Your BIOS has to have the CD drive as the first boot device, anything else
can be the second and third and so on. After you have booted from the
Windows CD you should see options to deal with partitions.

 

[Michael Stevens]

In

The second partition on my slave hard drive (Drive D under XP Pro)
decided a few days ago that it was going to become a RAW partition...
Now I can't figure out how to format it back to an NTFS partition
because right now it has no format to convert from. Saving the data
that was on the partition isn't crucial to me since the majority of
it was backed up on CDs or savable by Norton GoBack. But I would like
to have my partition readable again since it's 50 GB in size... Is
there any way to do this without reformatting the whole drive or with
a useful freeware utility? I don't have a floppy drive, but I do have
a USB drive, CD-RW, DVD-R, and card drives.

Here's my setup if it can be of any help:

HDD 1: WD 40GB
Partition 1: 33.54GB, FAT32, home of Win98SE, Drive F in XP, Drive C
in 98SE Partition 2: 3.72GB, FAT32, file backup, Drive M in XP, Drive
D in 98SE

HDD2: Seagate 120GB
Partition 1: 55.89GB, NTFS, home of WinXP Pro SP2, Drive C in XP
Partition 2: 50.04GB, NTFS, <== former file storage space, now RAW,
Drive D in XP
Partition 3: 5.85GB, FAT32, OEM Recovery Partition, Drive E in XP

Thanks in advance for any advice and help,

Charissa

Format XP
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/format_XP.htm
--
Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
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[Guest]

OK, something isn't right....

I started up the Recovery Console and went into the partition manager tool,
but I couldn't figure out which partition was the RAW partition, so I typed
map at the command prompt and it gave me back this information:

C: FAT32 34350MB (33.54GB) HardDrive0\Partition1
(multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1))
E: FAT32 3812MB (3.72GB) HardDrive0\Partition2
(multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2))

L: NTFS 114470MB (111.79GB) HardDrive1\Partition1
(multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1))

J: Cdrom0
K:Cdrom1

Though I'm not sure why it skipped the letter D:, it got the partitions on
my primary hard drive right in format in size. But, on my slave hard drive,
it is detecting the whole hard drive as one partition, because the size of
partition matches up to the size of the entire drive in disk management. But
there should be two partitions on the slave drive: A Primary NTFS Partition
and an Extended Partition containing the former NTFS RAW Drive and the FAT32
Drive. Any ideas on why it is doing this? And how can I get it to display the
missing partition? Or since 1 drive in the partition is RAW and the other is
FAT32, do I need to format the RAW drive only instead of the whole partition?

Thanks again,

Charissa

 

[Guest]

use disk management to delete "Raw" partition, then.
Raw partition is an extended partition with only one logical drive, correct?
so second HDD: first part is primary, second part is extended, third part is
hidden OEM.

 

[Guest]

I don't think the whole partition is RAW because I can still access the FAT32
drive that is in the same extended partition as the RAW drive. I can see the
FAT32 drive and its files from Windows XP. This is kind of what the the hard
drives look like in Disk Management, where ----- is the primary partition and
==== is the extended partition.

Master Drive(HDD0) 37.27GB
-------------------------=============
FAT32 F: | FAT32 M: |
33.54GB | 3.72GB |
-------------------------=============
Primary Partition Extended Partition

Slave Drive (HDD1) 111.79GB
-------------------------=======================
NTFS C: | RAW D: | FAT32 E:|
54.89GB | 50.04GB | 5.85GB |
-------------------------=======================
Primary Partition Extended Partition

Hope this helps.

Thanks,
Charissa

 

[Guest]

SO. you still can delete "Raw" partition!!!
don't have to delete entire extended partition. just logical drive "D".

 

[Glen P]

Go back into Windows and delete the partition from disc manager. That lists
the correct partition. So you should be able to delete the raw partition and
recreate a new ntfs one.

Glen P

 

[Guest]

I tried to delete the logical drive (There wasn't an option to delete the
entire partition) and it gave me this error message:

"The disk configuration operation did not complete. Check the System Event
Log for more information on the error. Verify the status of your storage
devices before retrying. If that does not solve the problem, close the Disk
Management console, then restart Disk Management or restart the computer."

I tried restarting several times and even tried deleting the logical drive
and formatting in safe mode but get the same message. I can't find any
information in the System Event Log pertaining to this error.

Then I tried to format it with NTFS through Disk Management and it gives me
an error message that says that the format was unsuccessful.

There is nothing I can do through the Recovery Console to delete the logical
drives because they don't show up. It shows the whole hard drive as one
partition, yet the amount of free space it shows is not the amount of free
space on the whole hard drive, instead it shows the amount of free space on
Drive C (the primary partition). And the second logical drive in the extended
partition doesn't show up there either, even though it and its files show up
just fine in Windows.

I'm assuming that the format isn't working because the logical drive delete
isn't successful.

Any suggestions?

Thanks for the advice,

Charissa

 

[Guest]

Okay, I just dug up an old copy of PartitionMagic and it let me recreate the
logical drive and formatted it with NTFS.