Reformatted master drive, now slave wont respond

[Donboy]

I have 2 hard drives. The master was 30 gig with a single partition, formatted to NTFS and running Windows 2000. The slave was also 30 gig, single partition, formatted to NTFS and holds an assortment of personal user files. The slave is not bootable or anything... it's just a dumping ground for user files.

Yesterday I formatted the master and partitioned the disk into 2 drives. C drive is now running Windows ME, formatted to FAT32. For some reason, the system is showing my E drive as the other half of the master disk. Strange that it didn't assign it as D, but anyway, the E drive is running Win2k formatted to NTFS.

The format and install of the OS's went fine. The problem is, my other hard drive (the slave) that was holding all the user files will not respond. Everytime I click on the drive letter in Windows, it asks me if I want to reformat the drive. Obviously I don't want to do this, because it'll wipe out everything I had.

Is there something I can do that will make the slave drive accessible again?

 

[ZachBenj]

Windows ME will not read a NTFS partition. Install WIN2K again and you will be able to get to the partition. I have not tried this but there is a utility that will allow you to see NTFS partitions for 'DOS' called NTFSDOS. Here is the Link:

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/NTFSDOS.shtml

This may do what you need. Hope this helps!!
Scott My suggestions are what I would try myself. If incorrect, I welcome corrections to my knowledge.
Scott
stomlin@baptistfirst.org

 

[Donboy]

Well, the weird thing is... I can't view the drive in Win2k or WinME. In either OS, if I click on the drive letter under My Computer, it asks me if I want to format the drive.

If I could safely move all of the data to another drive, I would have no problems about reformatting the slave and moving all of the data back to the drive afterwards.

Is there a utility of some kind I can use that will allow me to copy all the data even though I can't see it via Windows?

 

[tatorface]

you could use Norton's Ghost (

http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/)

it makes a complete copy of your drive image to another drive. try that out. it is run in dos so you should be fine. Taylor
MCP, MCSE, A+

 

[mainegeek]

Run fdisk from a boot disk and make E active insted of
C

 

[Donboy]

Set E as active instead of C?? I understand how, but what is that going to do?

 

[Donboy]

Ok, I just tried what you said but no luck.

Here's the stuff I saw under fdisk.

15 gig of space is set as the primary dos partition, and fdisk refers to this as "drive c". The rest of the space (about 13 gig) is set as the extended dos partition. This screen also said "logical drives exist in the extended dos partition" and that I could press a key to see more detailed information. The screen that followed said all of the allowable space was allocated to the logical drive and fidsk was referring to this space as "drive d".

It seems like Windows has taken it upon itself to assign different drive letters to these volumes. Under My Computer (in either OS) it says...

Drive "C" is formatted to FAT32 and running Windows ME with 15 gig of space. (Fdisk also referred to this as drive "C&quot

Drive "D" is my other physical drive that cannot be read and asks me if I want to format the drive. (Fdisk cannot see this drive because it's not the master.)

Drive "E" is the 13 gig of space that is running Win2k and formatted to NTFS. (Fdisk referred to this as drive "D".)

The problem is, when I tried to set something as active, the only choices I have are to set the primary or extended dos partitions as active. I tried setting the extended to active, but it wouldn't boot up. It just sat there with a black screen.

I'm going to look at Norton Ghost, but I have this feeling I will be putting my data at risk by messing with it like that.

 

[mainegeek]

Sorry, I got cut off before I could finish. The partition letter assignments are correct. The masters(primary/secondary) always assign in order first. If you removed the 2nd hard drive, the extended on the first would become D. Also you can't boot from an extended partition.

I was going to suggest that you remove E extented and re-partition and format C as NTFS and "stripe" the two hard drives, but I believe that would require safely getting the data that you want to keep off of D first.

 

[ZachBenj]

In my experience, if fdisk would not see the drive it was for on of 2 reasons: The drive was bad or the jumper setting on the drive was not correct.
FDISK should see the drive. It may not see it correctly or report the correct size but it should still see the drive. The drive setting of Master or slave will not matter. FDISK should see the drive.

If you are using the EIDE cable then set your drives to cable select and see if this clears the issue. When doing tcable select (C/S) the drive position on the cable will determine if it is C: or D:.
May want to try that to see if you cann see your data. My suggestions are what I would try myself. If incorrect, I welcome corrections to my knowledge.
Scott
stomlin@baptistfirst.org

 

[WETFOX]

Hi Donboy!

Booting your system in extended partition won't work because
it will only boot to physical drive(unless you have OSLoader installed, I think Win2k has built-in feature) If FDISK can't see your
drive D: but see drive E: as extended partition of C:,
IT'S VERY CONFUSING.

Please try to do this:

1. Be sure to set the jumper settings of your harddrives
to master/slave setup.

2. Go to CMOS setup of your computer and autodetect the drives. If successful you should see the correct drive
assignments: C: as your master and D: as your slave(your data). Pls save the correct settings and exit. By the way
your drive assignment is correct. The last drive is always
the extended partition or the CDROM or Virtual drive. Physical drive is set as the priority.

3. I'm sure that if you pull out your slave drive and make it slave to a running NTFS bootable drive, the system will see your drive(your data). By the way, if you want to dual boot, you can use OS Loader and other utilities like this.

4. In your case, do not reformat your data drive. If you want, you can reformat your master, partition it as before, and make C: as the Windows2K, E: as WinME (not C: as ME!!)

PLs do this and give me feedback asap. I wish it will help u.

 

[WETFOX]

Hi Donboy!

Booting your system in extended partition won't work because
it will only boot to physical drive(unless you have OSLoader installed, I think Win2k has built-in feature) If FDISK can't see your
drive D: but see drive E: as extended partition of C:,
IT'S VERY CONFUSING.

Please try to do this:

1. Be sure to set the jumper settings of your harddrives
to master/slave setup.

2. Go to CMOS setup of your computer and autodetect the drives. If successful you should see the correct drive
assignments: C: as your master and D: as your slave(your data). Pls save the correct settings and exit. By the way
your drive assignment is correct. The last drive is always
the extended partition or the CDROM or Virtual drive. Physical drive is set as the priority.

3. I'm sure that if you pull out your slave drive and make it slave to a running NTFS bootable drive, the system will see your drive(your data). By the way, if you want to dual boot, you can use OS Loader and other utilities like this.

4. In your case, do not reformat your data drive. If you want, you can reformat your master, partition it as before, and make C: as the Windows2K, E: as WinME (not C: as ME!!)

PLs do this and give me feedback asap. I wish it will help u.