NTFS partition not recognized by XP

[Guest]

I have 2 drives.
The first has XP and linux on it.
The second has an NTFS partition and a FAT32 partition.

For some reason after installing XP the NTFS partition on the second drive
is not mounted. When I look at it in Disk Management, it is recognized as a
'Logical Drive' and it says it is NTFS.

I don't remember if I made it a primary partition.

How can I get it back?

Thanks,
Eagle Eye

 

[Guest]

You may not want to make it Primary, but active; read on.

Windows XP supports up to four partitions per hard disk.

Windows XP supports two main partition TYPES: Primary and Extended.

A primary partition is one from which one can boot up an Operating System.

All four partitions can be designated as Primary [or bootable, should one
wish to install more than one Operating System, such as XP, 98, Linux etc].

One primary partition at a time must be marked as ‘Active’ designating it as
the one from which the computer will boot: in almost all cases this should be
the ‘C-Drive’.

One partition can be allocated as an Extended Partition. These differ in
that they are not formatted with a file system or assigned a specific drive
letter [‘D’, thru to ‘Z’].

An Extended Partition is then a dedicated area of disk space in which one
can then create a number of Logical Drives.

Logical Drives are similar to primary partitions in that they are
individually formatted with a file system and assigned a drive letter: thus
an extended partition can have an unlimited number of Logical Drives each
with its own drive letter, none of the Logical drives is bootable.

Use for logical drives can be to assign a specific drive letter [logical
drive] for each file type [word document, email, MP3] or on a computer with
many users, one or more logical drive per user.

Windows XP supports three file systems NTFS, FAT32 and FAT [the latter 2
being introduced with earlier Windows systems as you most probably know
well]. Limitations for each file system are:
FAT – only addresses up to 4Gb of disk space [Windows XP, 95 and earlier
Windows versions only]

FAT32 - only addresses up to 32Gb of disk space [Windows XP, Me 98 and 95
Second Edition]

NTFS - addresses up to 2,000Gb of disk space [Windows XP]

One would use a partitioned hard drive formatted as FAT32 or FAT should one
wish to accommodate a dual boot system [running XP or an earlier Operating
System].

Should one have Windows XP Pro, a further benefit of NTFS is that files can
be encrypted.

 

[Walter Clayton]

With in disk manager, right click the partition and select assign/change
drive letter.

 

[Guest]

Thanks BAR,

How would I make it primary, and would I lose everything on the logical
partition?

Also, the second half of this drive is FAT32. I don't remember if I created
an extended partition and put the NTFS & FAT32 in there. If I converted the
NTFS partition to primary would I lose the FAT32?


Eagle Eye

You may not want to make it Primary, but active; read on.

Windows XP supports up to four partitions per hard disk.

Windows XP supports two main partition TYPES: Primary and Extended.

A primary partition is one from which one can boot up an Operating System.

All four partitions can be designated as Primary [or bootable, should one
wish to install more than one Operating System, such as XP, 98, Linux etc].

One primary partition at a time must be marked as ‘Active’ designating it as
the one from which the computer will boot: in almost all cases this should be
the ‘C-Drive’.

One partition can be allocated as an Extended Partition. These differ in
that they are not formatted with a file system or assigned a specific drive
letter [‘D’, thru to ‘Z’].

An Extended Partition is then a dedicated area of disk space in which one
can then create a number of Logical Drives.

Logical Drives are similar to primary partitions in that they are
individually formatted with a file system and assigned a drive letter: thus
an extended partition can have an unlimited number of Logical Drives each
with its own drive letter, none of the Logical drives is bootable.

Use for logical drives can be to assign a specific drive letter [logical
drive] for each file type [word document, email, MP3] or on a computer with
many users, one or more logical drive per user.

Windows XP supports three file systems NTFS, FAT32 and FAT [the latter 2
being introduced with earlier Windows systems as you most probably know
well]. Limitations for each file system are:
FAT – only addresses up to 4Gb of disk space [Windows XP, 95 and earlier
Windows versions only]

FAT32 - only addresses up to 32Gb of disk space [Windows XP, Me 98 and 95
Second Edition]

NTFS - addresses up to 2,000Gb of disk space [Windows XP]

One would use a partitioned hard drive formatted as FAT32 or FAT should one
wish to accommodate a dual boot system [running XP or an earlier Operating
System].

Should one have Windows XP Pro, a further benefit of NTFS is that files can
be encrypted.

I have 2 drives.
The first has XP and linux on it.
The second has an NTFS partition and a FAT32 partition.

For some reason after installing XP the NTFS partition on the second drive
is not mounted. When I look at it in Disk Management, it is recognized as a
'Logical Drive' and it says it is NTFS.

I don't remember if I made it a primary partition.

How can I get it back?

Thanks,
Eagle Eye

 

[Timothy Daniels]

You may not want to make it Primary, but active; read on.

The "active" flag only means that the partition so marked
is expected to have a partition containing the boot files
boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com. Thus, the "active" parition
is passed control by the BIOS. Since the boot.ini file can
have options to load operating systems from another
partition (even a partition on another hard drive), the "active"
partition need not even contain the operating system. IOW,
"active" has nothing to do with access to a partition by a
running operating system.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I have 2 drives.
The first has XP and linux on it.
The second has an NTFS partition and a FAT32 partition.

For some reason after installing XP the NTFS partition on
the second drive is not mounted. When I look at it in
Disk Management, it is recognized as a 'Logical Drive'
and it says it is NTFS.

I don't remember if I made it a primary partition.

How can I get it back?

You don't mention how the partition containing WinXP
is formatted. If it's FAT32, it won't be able to access
the NTFS partition. If it is NTFS, is the NTFS partition
on the other hard drive assigned a letter name? You
can do that with Disk Management, and when you do
it, Disk Management will evern suggest a letter to use.

*TimDaniels*