NTFS hard drive now FAT32X

[OpSiN]

OK, so I had my boot drive (4GB) and my D: (20GB), both NTFS format (running win2k pro).
Not expecting any issue, having reformatted many times, i converted the boot drive to FAT32 to run win98 for a time, and when I went back to NTFS and installed 2k again, it claimed D: was not formatted. Knowing this not to be true I went through various things, and discovered it was considering it to be FAT32X, which i discovered meant i could only recover 8GB of it. This means I have recovered around half of it's contents, but unfortunately most of the things i really want are in the other half! I've looked at partition table changes and enquired as to paragon partition manager (which claims to convert formats without loss of data) but they said they can't guarantee it will convert to NTFS without losing the contents. Is there a way I can get this data back?

 

[wolluf]

Can you provide more information? Did you initially have 2 primary NTFS partitions or was the second an extended partition? I ask, as if second was primary, there's no way it would stop being NTFS unless you did something to it or your partition table - but I've seen odd things happen to extended partitions when the primary is deleted. And how have you been using this paragon partition manager? FAT32X is just FAT32 extended to be able to cope with > 8GB partitions. If you had a 20GB NTFS partition and haven't done anything to it, then even if operating system thinks its now FAT32X, you wouldn't be able to read it as NTFS and FAT32 file structures are different. Are you telling whole story?

 

[OpSiN]

well, the 20gb drive only had the a primary partition, so nothing on the whole drive got touched when i changed the boot drive to fat32. The boot drive being a physically different drive. (I am now booting off a 30GB so I have space to recover or backup the 20GB partition if need be, though the 4gb can be replaced any time if I need that). I haven't used partition manager at all. I just asked them whether it would do what it claimed. I have made a conscious effort not to physically alter anything on the drive at all, until I find something that may work. The drive is still NTFS format, it just thinks it's now FAT32x. which means I am hopeful there is something i can do to tell it it's NTFS format and have it work again!