NTFS drive thinks its FAT

[slimeruk]

I had a perfectly working PC with XP Pro installed on a 160Gb Maxtor HDD.

For no reason I error checked the hard drive, which the system did after rebooting, at the end of the test the system rebooted and announced that there was a error on the boot and boot.ini.

Useing XP Emergency (on disk) I tried fixmbr which did nothing then I tried Fixboot. XP found the drive identified it as FAT and said that it was successfully fixed.

The drive was FAT and is now unusable. Partition Magic sees it as a FAT drive as does XP when I switched the HDD into another machine.

I have a couple of file recovery programs which see this drive as FAT and will not show up any files. I tried a demo of Partition Table Doctor 3.0 which sees it as NTFS drive and claims it can rebuild the table to make this work again, but being a demo will not do it until I pay $49

I have checked various reviews and the only positive ones seem to have been left by the same person (The broken english is the same on them all.) So I am very dubious to hand over the cash.

I need the files on this HDD desperately, theres alot of crucial stuff there since my last backup which I do do (but not as often as I should have!)

I have booted using a Live Linux CD (Knoppix) and that shows as a FAT there too and I do not have any expertise with QPART or Linux either really.

My question to you lovely people is.... Anyone used PTD 3.0 and can honestly recommend it for this problem, or if anyone has any other suggestions to that this drive can be called NTFS rather than FAT without a format?

The drive was not converted to FAT just the partition table adjusted as far as I can see. I need something that does the same as fixboot but the opposite to switch it back to NTFS, hopefully with file system intact.

Those of you familiar with partionmagic might want to know that textually it claims I have only used 6.8Mb of the drive but graphically the bar goes to the percentage of the drive that I had actually used. (It reports the total size correctly, but as the others thinks its FAT rather than NTFS)

I can access the drive but its all gobble-de-gook

Thanks for reading........ over to you......

 

[garebo]

This doesnt help you out any but i stop windows from running chkdsk and i dont run it at all, heard of too many problems like you have encountered, although, for me, this is the first time i have heard about an NTFS drive being reverted to fat32.
What about installing this hard drive as a slave on another win xp system and then using disk management to revert it to NTFS, or would that wipe out your data?
Sorry, thats about all i can think of at the moment.
But someone else will come up with other ideas.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[slimeruk]

Thanks, the only options I can find to change the file system are format quick and full.

On the upside a couple of other file recovery programs show the whole structure intact making me think that if I can just get Windows to think the drive is NTFS then the drive may be able to be accessed as normal.
The file recovery programs I have used are only downloaded demos, but I have the full version of one of those but..... you guessed it, it is on the hard drive I need to recover. (Damn my lack of backup on that one.)

Anyone aware of any switches that can be used with fixboot to force a NTFS label/structure.

Oh... one more thing, Disk management refers to the drive as FAT12, not FAT16 or 32

 

[garebo]

Well, for quick format they run chkdsk and look for bad sectors. If you know the drive is good then you can just go for the quick format.
What about installing windows over top of itself, maybe it will go to NTFS? Course you may not want to take the chance and lose your data.
I wonder if microsoft can help you, as far as maybe googling for help at microsoft site.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[caffeinated]

Why don't you hook it up into the second system you spoke of as a slave and run the convert command from a command prompt?
After hooking it up to the machine and allowing the machine to install it, reboot if necessary and make sure it shows up in Windows Explorer. If not, you will need to "activate" it in Disk management (Windows 2000, XP or 2003). Then run the Command and type in (without quotes) "convert x: /fs:ntfs" (where x: is the drive letter Windows or yourself has assigned in the new machine.) It will prompt you to restart the machine to continue and convert back to ntfs. I will not guarantee this action will recover the data, but I cannot say I have ever seen NTFS changing to FAT. Is it a FAT32?

Caffeinated

 

[mainegeek]

slimeruk,
Perhaps it has always been FAT.Try slaving it to another PC in order to get your data off. Why not simply re-install XP?

 

[slimeruk]

Not is it certainly NTFS, the boot partition has been changed to FAT12!

Certain file recovery programmes and partition repair programs identify it as NTFS even though the lead sector is described as MSDOS 5.0 with FAT12 as a file system.

The drive is slaved onto the meachine I am using now, Disk management shows it as FAT, Online, Healthy but explorer will open 'folders' which are all designated with the windings style font 'you know what I mean'.

Thanks for the replies though, my search goes on.

 

[mainegeek]

slimeruk,
What make and model is your PC? Has it ever had a drive overlay on it? Some systems have a hidden FAT12 partition on them which is used as a hibernation partition.

 

[slimeruk]

I have now backed up all the files I wanted to keep so am about to do a format and start again......

Just to answer the two replies above, Caffeinated, I tried what you said it asked for a a forced dismaout then sadly told me there was inconsistancies with the drive and to run chkdsk (which won't work on that drive anyhow)

mainegeek, thanks for your reply too, the system is my own creation, it has only ever been NTFS, but what may have done the damage to the backup may have been 'ramdisk' style disks that I use 'multi-boot, dos repair type files' As they make a virtual drive they may be doing it with the floppy format (FAT12)

Recovering all the files I found 10 extra tiny partitions with the bootdisk files inside, these were never visible through windows.

Thanks for the help again, but problem will be gone mostly in around an hour. Shame there wasn't a quick fix for this.