Secondary Hard Disk Problems

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike Green
  • Start date Start date
M

Mike Green

hi all,

Yesterday i decided that it was time to format my C: drive
(20 gig FAT32), as over the past three years i have
collected rather a lot of rubbish and old programs i know
longer use. Thinking that i was being clever, i backed up
all my documents/stuff onto my Second Hard disk (10 gigs
FAT32)... "Excellent..." i muttered to myself.

I then began reinstalling Windows 2000 pro. Now the first
time i installed it, i was prompted to set the format of
the drive to NTFC (windows recommends it you see). And I
continue the installation. For some reason i didn't format
the drive, so during setup all the old files were changed
to NTFC format... After the long wait everything carried
on as normal. However there was no E Drive to be found in
my computer. So i look in 'Computer managment' and it can
see the drive. However its 'unreadable'. Thinking that
i've screwed something up by making the C: drive NTFC i
reinstall, but Format the C Drive back to FAT32 again.
However i still have the same problem... I then tried
moving the hard drive to my Windows XP Home PC, and i get
the same message (something about windows XP doesn't work
with Win 2000 pro etc...).

The only options i have is to change the Drive
from 'Dynamic'to 'Basic' which i don't want to do, because
it has all my work on it! (things are never as simple as
you think!)

If anyone has a solution i would be eternally grateful, as
i have absolutely no clue what to do now!

Thanks for reading!
 
Hi, Mike.

As they say, when you find yourself in a hole, STOP DIGGING! And, from
where you are now, a dynamic disk would definitely be a deeper hole!

Reformatting your HD is a good idea. Although seldom really necessary, it
does, as you say, give you a chance to clean out the deadwood - and is the
best way to switch to NTFS. My favorite way is to backup all my data, but
not the operating system or the applications. After I repartition
(optional) and reformat, I reinstall my OS and then my applications from the
original CD-ROMs. And I only reinstall what I'm pretty sure I'm going to
continue to use.

So far, so good.

Why would you continue to use FAT32? Unless you plan to install Win9x/ME on
this computer, format it NTFS all the way. (New Technology File System, not
NTFC.) NTFS is much more secure, both in the sense of security from
unauthorized access and in the sense of security from hard drive glitches.
FAT32 is a little more efficient on small drives, but we stopped using <1 GB
HDs several years ago, so there went that justification for using FAT.
Except for the few utilities that actually deal with the file systems,
application and data files don't know or care how the HD is formatted.
Win2K/XP mixes and matches FAT32 and NTFS as smoothly as it copies files to
or from a FAT12 floppy or a UDF CD/DVD drive.

No operating system can "saw off the limb it's sitting on", so we have to
boot from something other than Drive C: to format Drive C:. Even in MS-DOS
days, we booted from a floppy and used FDISK and Format.exe to deal with
Drive C:. In Win2K/XP, we boot from the Windows CD-ROM to format Drive C:,
then boot into Windows and use Disk Management to handle any other
partitioning and formatting tasks. (If we choose to install Windows on a
volume other than Drive C:, we must also create and format that "boot
volume" before running Setup.) You said you looked in Computer Management;
the Disk Management component of that is what you need to get familiar with
and use. You can type diskmgmt.msc at the Run prompt to get there. Use
View to set it up the way that makes sense to you; I like to show the Volume
List at the top and the Graphical View on the bottom.

Assuming you still want to install Win2K (rather than WinXP) on your 20 GB
HD and make it your master drive again, all you have to do is to physically
install it as master (leave the other HD uninstalled for now) and set your
computer BIOS to boot from CD-ROM. Then boot from the Win2K CD. When it
offers to partition and format your HD, say Yes. But be sure to choose the
size you want for Drive C:, or it will use the whole 20 GB for C:, leaving
nothing to be used for E: or any other volume. (That may be what happened
to you last time, when you couldn't find a Drive E:.) As soon as you get
Win2K installed and get your firewall and antivirus installed and working,
get back online and visit Windows Update to be sure that you have all the
security fixes in place. Then use Disk Management to create a new partition
on your 20 GB HD, assign it E: or whatever drive letter you like, and format
it NTFS. Then you can shut down, physically install your 10 GB HD as
secondary and reboot. Use Disk Management to assign whatever drive letters
you want to partitions and CD/DVD drives. (Why not label the CD/DVDs as V:
or W: or some other letter that gets them out of the way of HD partitions?)
Reinstall your applications and copy your data files from your old HD - or
leave them there and tell the apps where to find them.

The procedure for WinXP is identical, except for changes in the interface.

Forget dynamic disks for now, unless you are willing to study the Disk
Management Help file to understand their advantages - and several "gotchas".
Stick with basic disks until then.

Good luck. Let us know how it works out for you.

RC
 
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