Other partitions missing after format.

[Guest]

Hi,

I have a very big and interesting problem. I have a 200gb hdd and I had
partitioned it into 12 partitions.

C: 11gb NTFS Primary
D: 7gb NTSF Primary
Extended
E: 8gb Fat32
F: 7gb FAT32
G: 6gb FAT32
H: 25.5gb FAT32
I: 25gb FAT32
J: 30gb FAT32
K: 30gb NTFS
L: 25gb FAT32

As you can see this is only 10 and not 12. That is because I decided to
format K: into NTFS and when the format (which gave and error)was finished
all the partitions after G: were gone.

I ran a program that recoverd the partitions but the other two were not
recovered. I have gone into disk manager and it just shows the space where
they should be ( G: 7gb and N: 9gb) as free space.

I am not to worried about recovering the missing data because it is backed
up, what I do want is to fix this problem so it does not happen again.

An interesting side not is that this sort of problem also happened on my
previous hdd (160gb) with the partitions being roughtly the same size. Also
numerous programs read the HDD as 130gb. But my bios picks it up as a 200gb.

If I was to format all my partitions as NTFS would this possibly fix the
problem?

Specs:

Win 2K
SP 4
MB: ASUS A7V333
HDD Samsung SP2014N


Any help would be great.

 

[Gary Chanson]

Hi,

I have a very big and interesting problem. I have a 200gb hdd and I had
partitioned it into 12 partitions.

C: 11gb NTFS Primary
D: 7gb NTSF Primary
Extended
E: 8gb Fat32
F: 7gb FAT32
G: 6gb FAT32
H: 25.5gb FAT32
I: 25gb FAT32
J: 30gb FAT32
K: 30gb NTFS
L: 25gb FAT32

As you can see this is only 10 and not 12. That is because I decided to
format K: into NTFS and when the format (which gave and error)was finished
all the partitions after G: were gone.

I ran a program that recoverd the partitions but the other two were not
recovered. I have gone into disk manager and it just shows the space where
they should be ( G: 7gb and N: 9gb) as free space.

I am not to worried about recovering the missing data because it is backed
up, what I do want is to fix this problem so it does not happen again.

An interesting side not is that this sort of problem also happened on my
previous hdd (160gb) with the partitions being roughtly the same size. Also
numerous programs read the HDD as 130gb. But my bios picks it up as a 200gb.

If I was to format all my partitions as NTFS would this possibly fix the
problem?

I doubt it.

Specs:

Win 2K
SP 4
MB: ASUS A7V333
HDD Samsung SP2014N

The "130 GB" is very suggestive of a program or system which does not
support 48-bit LBA addressing. On the other hand, since you were apparently
able to create 200 GB of partitions using the Disk Manager, Win2K probably
has 48-bit LBA addressing enabled.

One possibility is that one of those programs which reported the drive
as 130 GB caused damage by trashing partition tables for instance. Another
possibility is a problem with the HD itself. I suppose a bug in Win2K could
be responsible but I'm not aware of any bugs in its 48-bit LBA support.

 

[Sandy Stubbings]

Hey Gary,

You were correct about it being 48-bit LBA addressing. After I enabled
48-bit LBA the problem went away.

Thanks for your help.