Failing HDD, FAT32 partition accessible from Win98 boot disk but NOT from Win2000. How come?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Frank B Denman
  • Start date Start date
F

Frank B Denman

The customer had a 40GB drive, formatted 8GB FAT32 system partition,
32GB NTSF data partition.

Customer's machine could no longer boot to Win2000. Using a Win98
network boot disk, I could access and copy files from some (but not all)
folders on the FAT32 partition. Using the Win98 boot disk and ReadNTSF,
I can access and recover files from all folders on the NTSF partition.

But when I install the drive as disk1 in a working Win2000 machine, I
can no longer access the FAT32 partition. In Disk Management, the FAT32
partition is listed as "Healthy (Active)" but with no indication of
type. The NTFS partition is displayed normally (same as NTFS partitions
on disk0).

When I launch Windows Explorer and click on the FAT32 drive, I get an
hourglass for half a minute, and then a popup msg that "The disk in
drive E is not formatted. Do you want to format it now."

There is no problem viewing the contents of the NTFS partition with
Windows Explorer.

Can anybody help me understand why this damaged FAT32 partition is
accessible from a Win98 boot disk, but not from Win2000?

Thanks.

Frank

Frank Denman
Denman Systems
(please remove the x from my email address)
 
Frank said:
The customer had a 40GB drive, formatted 8GB FAT32 system partition,
32GB NTSF data partition.

Customer's machine could no longer boot to Win2000. Using a Win98
network boot disk, I could access and copy files from some (but not all)
folders on the FAT32 partition. Using the Win98 boot disk and ReadNTSF,
I can access and recover files from all folders on the NTSF partition.

But when I install the drive as disk1 in a working Win2000 machine, I
can no longer access the FAT32 partition. In Disk Management, the FAT32
partition is listed as "Healthy (Active)" but with no indication of
type. The NTFS partition is displayed normally (same as NTFS partitions
on disk0).

When I launch Windows Explorer and click on the FAT32 drive, I get an
hourglass for half a minute, and then a popup msg that "The disk in
drive E is not formatted. Do you want to format it now."

There is no problem viewing the contents of the NTFS partition with
Windows Explorer.

Can anybody help me understand why this damaged FAT32 partition is
accessible from a Win98 boot disk, but not from Win2000?

Thanks.

Frank
Click to expand...

IIRC Explorer has trouble with partitions (and diskettes) formatted by
another OS, even an older Win OS. If my recollection is wrong, I'm sure
this guess will be corrected. :-)

If you want to get at all the files on the FAT32, you may be able to do
so via the command line. It's worth a try, anyhow. Checkdisk may be able
to repair the file system, but at the risk of losing some data (ie,
dumping it into salvage files that then must be searched for usable
chunks of data. A PITA.) Otherwise, I suspect you'll have to invest in
data recovery software. Pricey but worth it if you do a lot of HD
repair. A google will find several candidates..

HTH&GL
 
Back
Top