FAT to NTFS not working in Vista

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Guest

I try to run the conversion program in the command prompt to convert my hard
drive from FAT to NTFS and it tells me the drive is already an NTFS
partitioned hard drive. The western digital progrma I have which analyzes my
hard drive tells me its in FAT 16, and it makes sense since Vista won't let
me access it at all. I need some advice, The info on the drive is important.
Somebody please.....
 
What does Drive Management show the drive as?

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Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User
 
I try to run the conversion program in the command prompt to convert my hard
drive from FAT to NTFS and it tells me the drive is already an NTFS
partitioned hard drive. The western digital progrma I have which analyzes my
hard drive tells me its in FAT 16, and it makes sense since Vista won't let
me access it at all. I need some advice, The info on the drive is important.
Somebody please.....
Click to expand...
FAT16 ?
Wasn't the partition size limit for FAT16, 512 Megabytes?

If you were running a 3rd party drive manager to use this /oversized/
drive on a older O/S, you will need to use that O/S to BOOT and copy
the data to another machine (you can NOT do a drive to drive copy on
the same machine). Use a 'Laplink' type cable (uses serial or Parallel
port)
 
I was running XP Pro on it. I don't know why it would have been in Fat16, if
thats even possible, but thats what the WD program reads it as. The disk
management shows it as being 0 megs, and wont let me access it at all. It
just labels it volume 0. It is a raid setup, but my CMOS, and the WD read it
fine, and show it as having the proper, 320 gig storage capacity.
 
I wasn't using any 3rd party software, and it was on XP Pro, thanks.
Click to expand...
You might be seeing the small "Diagnostic" partition installed by some
suppliers (Toshiba has this) . There should be more than one partition
on the drive in this case.
BTW I have both XPpro and Vista drives in my dual boot system with no
problems.
 
It was an OEM WD drive that I bought, and I set it up, and it only ever had 1
partition. I believe my drive just somehow got corrupted, even though it was
working fine a few days ago, I don't know what happened. Anyway I've been
looking for a good recovery program. If you know of a good one that's free
I'd really appreciate it. I tried acheap one and it recovered some files, but
I deleted it because it wan't very good. Anything would help right now.

Thanks
 
Steve Urbach said:
You might be seeing the small "Diagnostic" partition installed by some
suppliers (Toshiba has this) . There should be more than one partition
on the drive in this case.
BTW I have both XPpro and Vista drives in my dual boot system with no
problems.
Click to expand...

Windows XP supports the creation of primary partitions and logical drives of
up to 4 gigabytes (GB) using the FAT16 file system. The maximum cluster size
is 64K.

The 4-GB partition limit is imposed by the maximum number of clusters and
the largest cluster size supported by the FAT file system. In Windows XP,
FAT16 is limited to 64K clusters. Multiply the maximum number of clusters
(64k) by the maximum cluster size (64K), and the result is 4GB. In addition
to Windows XP, Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 also
support FAT16 volumes up to 4GB in size.

FAT16 volumes larger than 2GB are not accessible from computers running
Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Windows 98, Windows 95, or
MS-DOS. The size limit for FAT16 volumes in these operating systems is 2 GB.
In other words, to maintain compatibility with Windows Me, Windows 98,
Windows 95, or MS-DOS, a volume cannot be larger than 2 GB. For additional
information about FAT16 drive and partition size limits in Windows Me,
Windows 98, Windows 95, and MS-DOS, click the article numbers below to view
the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310561
 
Windows XP supports the creation of primary partitions and logical drives of
up to 4 gigabytes (GB) using the FAT16 file system. The maximum cluster size
is 64K.

The 4-GB partition limit is imposed by the maximum number of clusters and
the largest cluster size supported by the FAT file system. In Windows XP,
FAT16 is limited to 64K clusters. Multiply the maximum number of clusters
(64k) by the maximum cluster size (64K), and the result is 4GB. In addition
to Windows XP, Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 also
support FAT16 volumes up to 4GB in size.

FAT16 volumes larger than 2GB are not accessible from computers running
Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Windows 98, Windows 95, or
MS-DOS. The size limit for FAT16 volumes in these operating systems is 2 GB.
In other words, to maintain compatibility with Windows Me, Windows 98,
Windows 95, or MS-DOS, a volume cannot be larger than 2 GB. For additional
information about FAT16 drive and partition size limits in Windows Me,
Windows 98, Windows 95, and MS-DOS, click the article numbers below to view
the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310561
Click to expand...
Thanks
I now remember where the 512MB came from.
Antique BIOS that did not envision drive sizes that we have on today's
desktop.
Who would ever need more than 640K memory :^) ?
 
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