NTFS to FAT32

[Wackywyrm]

My friend has recently formatted his hard drive to NTFS from fat 32, however it has corrupted most of his data and he now wishes to format his drive.unfortunatly he doesnt have the full version of xp only the upgrade from 98/me.

The problem being that they use a FAT32 file system and wont work in NTFS. Is there any way to convert his drive back to FAT32

Thanks in advance for any help

 

[rxpete]

first you have to copy fdisk.com onto your win 98 boot floppy. If you are using win 98 boot disk, you must use win 98 version of fdisk. you will find it in the windows/command folder. You might also want to copy format.exe, and sys.com or sys.exe onto the boot disk as well. Then edit the autoexec.bat and config.sys files on your win 98 boot disk to eliminate the ramdrive. now when you boot to win 98 command prompt, type fdisk, delete any logical drives on the hdd, then any extended partitions, and deleting the primary partition. After that you will have to restart the machine. then you will be able to format the drive and finally, use sys to make the c: drive bootable. If you are going to install w98 from cd then you don't have to bother formatting the drive since w98 setup will offer to do it for you.

 

[cdogg]

Win98 boot disks cannot see NTFS partitions. That's why it's telling you that "no fixed disks present". You will need to use a WinXP startup disk or boot to the XP CD. When the setup launches, you should find an option to delete or format the partition back to FAT32.


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[Fruzz]

"No Fixed Disks Present" means the problem is outside fdisk, so you will need to check the BIOS settings to make sure the drive has been picked up and that its operational and has all the cables plugged in securely.
You can use any fdisk version to delete NTFS partitions, and they will be listed as non-dos partitions in DOS/Win versions of fdisk.

 

[wolluf]

Wackywyrm,

It doesn't matter what the filestore is now - as long as you have a qualifying 98/ME disk to show to the machine, you can boot from the XP upgrade CD and clean install XP. XP has tools to let you remove/create/format partitions during the install. You don't need to do anything else first
(this is assuming you want ot reinstall XP).

If you want to reinstall 98 or ME, just boot with appropriate (98 or ME) boot disk (

http://www.bootdisk.com

if you haven't one) and use fdisk (enable large disk support) to remove the ntfs partition (it will show up as non-dos), and create new fat32 one. Then format & install as usual.

PS. No mention of saving data, so assuming not a requirement

 

[DallasKelsey]

NTFS conversion does not typically "corrupt" data. It appends information at the filestore level and applies these settings as security fields, in addition to storing the data differently on the disk. That being said, it is certainly possible that something went wrong--an errant spike of current the system handled poorly, some disk problem that was independent of the file system that was teertering on the brink of failure and the conversion happened to set off, perhaps a virus, who knows.

At any rate, if you are trying to preserve your data and revert it in its current state back to FAT32, there are two ways I have done this succesffully in the past:

OPTION 1: Obtain the latest and greatest version of PowerQuest's Partition Magic. Bear in mind the software ain't free-you can download a trial version but I do not think that it actually makes any changes to your system until you purchase it (trial my ***...it's more like a teaser). This software is very stable and works very well. It's also not terribly complicated to use. For an NTFS system, you will need to install it, create the disks, and boot from floppies as the hardware in your system is not directly accessible while NT or 2000 or XP is running. I have done this before with a 100% success rate. However a backup is still not a bad idea prior to setting out, just to CYA.

OPTION 2: Cost is siginifigantly less. Like $0 if you have the infrastructure available. Boot the system into the operating system and connect to another blank drive, formatted with FAT32 (actually, it doesn't matter what file system, because you will ultimately want to bring the data back). Use a network drive, for instance, or appropriate a floating hard drive from somewhere else and connect it to the PC that is having the issue. Do a simple copy from within the OS (use the edit menu and Windows Exploder) and paste the files/data you are looking to migrate to this temporary location. FDISK and repartition your drive as mentioned in the above posts, rebuild your OS with the Windows 9x system, then reconnect to the temporary drive and simply copy/paste the files back to the original locations. That should take care of it. Dallas S. Kelsey, III
DKelsey@CHGLaw.com
Cox, Hodgman, & Giarmarco, P.C.
Troy MI 48084