Hard Drive is completely full?

[mainit123]

I have an e-Machine PC with a Seagate 60 GB drive that
refuses to boot at all. The drive is loaded with XP
Home so it was setup as an NTFS drive.

To investigate if I could do anything to save some of
the files on the drive, I took the drive out and attached
it on the Secondary IDE bus to another PC running Win98SE that has Partition Magic.
Partition Magic reported that the disk was literally full
(57,885 Mbytes available and 57,885 Mbytes of data on the
drive). I realize this was an NTFS drive being looked
at under a FAT32 PC running Win98SE but does that mean
a user loses all credibility for what Partition Magic reports?
If I am to believe Partition Magic, is there any possible
way to slice off some of the data on this NTFS drive so
that it would at least boot? I am assuming it was a
virus or something like that which caused the drive to
become completely full, thereby preventing any sort of boot?
While looking at the disk within Partition Magic, it
appears I could go ahead and reformat but I was hoping
to get a chance to at least save some of the files on that Seagate drive.

 

[mainegeek]

Can you boot in safe mode? If so, go to recycle bin and un-allocate the space that it is using. In other words tick it so it does not move files to the recycle bin. Default is 10% which in your case represents 6gig. Also, if permitting,
check the root of C: for orphaned (non system) files and move them. Probably want to enable "show all files" first.
If you have an up-to-date antivirus program then run that as well. Constant re-starts may perpetuate the problem if it is a virus.

If you can start in safe mode try to be methodical on your course of action.

 

[mainegeek]

note** The statement about the 6gig mentioned in my last post is incorrect.

 

[Frank4d]

I doubt that your Fat32 drive could see a NTFS drive at all, but I don't know Partition Magic that well either. In Win 98SE can you use the search all files and folders function to search the problem drive for any file that is over (pulling a number out of my a**) 500MB? If found, that file is likely the problem. I have never seen a single file that large that wasn't corrupted in some way. It could have been created by a virus, or if Sound Recorder or DVD recorder software was left turned on forever.

 

[micker377]

There's a program called "readntfs.exe" that allows Fat 32 to see ntfs. I don't know if you can delete files with it, but it's worth a look (free).

 

[mainit123]

Thanks one and all for the helpful posts.
I am sorry I was not specific enough.
While I can attach this drive to a IDE
Secondary cable and get it seen by Partition Magic
on a Win98SE machine, it absolutely will not
do anything when installed as the Master on its
own machine (IDE Primary Bus). I know about the
drive being completely full strictly from Partition
Magic reporting that versus being able to browse
it somehow with Explorer. I wish I had that luxury
but all I can see is, on a partition basis, this
drive is full. With Partition Magic, you cannot
get at individual files.
In any event, there are good suggestions here but
they all assume I can get an actual "look" at the
files or folders on this hard disk. In fact,
when this drive is installed as a master into it
the PC it was always running in, I don't even
get a Windows logo or startup screen, after the
BIOS screen displays. It just goes black and stays
black.
Hoping there is a more base level solution so that
I can at least get to see these files.....

 

[skeelsie]

I don't think your 98se machine will do the job, stick xp on your se machine with partition magic. Set the 60gig as slave, boot in safe mode with new xp install and change permissions to read all by all users, and you should be able to recover your stuff. Worked for me, but drive wasn't sick.

 

[Frank4d]

Are you sure the drive is "full"? Or is Partition Magic reporting that all of the space is "allocated" or "used", meaning the entire drive is used by one partition? If that is the case, micker377's suggestion might help.

 

[paulrw1]

If you can boot into safe mode, or can get into the drive, connected to another pc, as a slave drive, do a search for .bak, .log and .tmp files. DELETE them. Then do a CHKDSK c: /f and reboot. Then do a defrag.

 

[mainit123]

Thanks to all of your helpful posts.
I am about to use READNTFS.exe to see if I can at least
get into the drive. It DOES show in Partition Magic
but it displays as Full meaning there is no room to do
any operation on it from within Partition Magic.
My only hope is with READNTFS.exe to be able to start
copying files to my Master. You cannot delete files
while using READNTFS.exe, only see them and copy them
which is still better than nothing. I will try to copy
all that I need and then have no choice but to use
Partition Magic to blow it away and reformat, then
load XP back on. This drive is currently a slave
on my Secondary IDE bus inside a lowly Celeron 500 MHz
box with the master running Win98SE.
I am hopefully in the home stretch on this one and
appreciate your help.

 

[niravpatel]

Well Mainit,
PM 8 provides Browse... option for FAT, FAT32, NTFS, EXT2/3 filesystems. Just right click-select the partition and choose Browser... from context menu...

That way you can copy whatever you want...
N.B.: I don't know abt PM 7 and older version if they provide such functionality...

Nirav

Nirav Patel
#include<NoOneLivesForever>

 

[mainit123]

I want to officially close this thread and say Thanks
to all the replies. Basically, the NTFS Reader for DOS
saved the day as I can see that I can now copy the files
I need from the corrupt NTFS partition to my FAT32 drive.
I do very much appreciate all the input and it is nice
to know that these "super" class of tools does exist to
save partitions and copy off files from corrupt partitions
I have known about them for some time but really did not
have occasion to use them.
Nirav, for the record, I did download Partition Magic 8
and maybe it was the eval version I had but I did NOT
see any browse capability. It looks like a great new
version but I never did see where I could browse a
partition and see the actual files. Maybe that is very
much available in the genuine commercial version but
I don't have it in the one I downloaded for free.

This call can be closed!

Joel Stevens