I was referred to these problems as a possible source for a solution to a problem I seem to have caused myself...
This morning I was adjusting the main partition on my second harddrive to make room for a second partition (it was a 40GB drive all one partition, I planned to make it 2 x 20GB partitions). I've used partition magic here and there in the past while and haven't had any problems with it to date, but now I've got a big messup.
I thought the main partition that was there was a little bit odd as it started about 8mb into the disk, and was an extended partition (forgive my possible misuse of the vocabulary, this isn't a subject that I read about or talk about much). The partition had approx 17GB of data on it so I figured I would resize it down to 20 while moving it back those 8MB so it started right at the beginning, making it a primary dos partition. This seemed like the thing to do as I planned, once the drive was split up, to move most of the files onto the second partition and put the drive in a new PC which would involve installing windows onto the new first partition. The problem is that just into the partition magic batch it errored out saying "Too many errors have occured." Not usually a good sign and no further explanation was provided.
The program closed itself down (this operation was apparently an ok one to do without a reboot, so this was under windows). I wanted to check if the disk was ok of course so i opened up windows explorer to look for it and... it didn't exist. Not in the list at all. I thought odd, but ok maybe a reboot will help with that... no dice. I tried opening up partition magic and got an error while loading the program, which would not allow it to open, and it said "Partition's Drive Letter Cannot Be Identified." I next tried booting off the partition magic rescue disks which allow you to load the program from dos. This resulted in no troubles loading, but the drive isn't even found by the program. Hard drive 1: in the list, all partitions accounted for... harddrive 2: nothing, not there in any capacity. Very odd I thought... I decided to narrow things down a bit and shut down and disconnected my first drive, the one that was still functional. Now upon attempting to load partition magic from dos prompt it says no drives found. I tried fdisk which was located on the floppy and it sees no drives either.
At this point I went back into windows to see what other utilities partition magic came with. I found one which can get me some information. The partition info its able to give me about this drive, without any errors I might add, is that the old partition exists, same amount of free space, same size, but it was converted from a logical to primary partition and its in the same place (about 8mb into the physical disk). The disk still wasn't showing up in the drive list in explorer of course. I went into system properties into the hardware list and brought up the properties for the physical drive (which was still listed). In the volumes listing it was still able to populate the volume, and I can look at the properties for the volume which still list same amount of free space, but no access. It still doesn't get a drive letter. About the only interaction I currently have with the disk is the ability to change the volume label. It didn't have one before but I can change that to whatever I want now so there is some very limited interaction available.
Here is all the info I can get about the existing partitions:
Volume____PartType____Status____Size MB_____PartSect__#____StartSect______TotalSects
__________Unallocated__Pri__________7.8_____None____--__________63_________16,065
__________NTFS________Pri_____39,072.1_____0_______0_______16,128_____80,019,702
(these forums don't appear to have a
This morning I was adjusting the main partition on my second harddrive to make room for a second partition (it was a 40GB drive all one partition, I planned to make it 2 x 20GB partitions). I've used partition magic here and there in the past while and haven't had any problems with it to date, but now I've got a big messup.
I thought the main partition that was there was a little bit odd as it started about 8mb into the disk, and was an extended partition (forgive my possible misuse of the vocabulary, this isn't a subject that I read about or talk about much). The partition had approx 17GB of data on it so I figured I would resize it down to 20 while moving it back those 8MB so it started right at the beginning, making it a primary dos partition. This seemed like the thing to do as I planned, once the drive was split up, to move most of the files onto the second partition and put the drive in a new PC which would involve installing windows onto the new first partition. The problem is that just into the partition magic batch it errored out saying "Too many errors have occured." Not usually a good sign and no further explanation was provided.
The program closed itself down (this operation was apparently an ok one to do without a reboot, so this was under windows). I wanted to check if the disk was ok of course so i opened up windows explorer to look for it and... it didn't exist. Not in the list at all. I thought odd, but ok maybe a reboot will help with that... no dice. I tried opening up partition magic and got an error while loading the program, which would not allow it to open, and it said "Partition's Drive Letter Cannot Be Identified." I next tried booting off the partition magic rescue disks which allow you to load the program from dos. This resulted in no troubles loading, but the drive isn't even found by the program. Hard drive 1: in the list, all partitions accounted for... harddrive 2: nothing, not there in any capacity. Very odd I thought... I decided to narrow things down a bit and shut down and disconnected my first drive, the one that was still functional. Now upon attempting to load partition magic from dos prompt it says no drives found. I tried fdisk which was located on the floppy and it sees no drives either.
At this point I went back into windows to see what other utilities partition magic came with. I found one which can get me some information. The partition info its able to give me about this drive, without any errors I might add, is that the old partition exists, same amount of free space, same size, but it was converted from a logical to primary partition and its in the same place (about 8mb into the physical disk). The disk still wasn't showing up in the drive list in explorer of course. I went into system properties into the hardware list and brought up the properties for the physical drive (which was still listed). In the volumes listing it was still able to populate the volume, and I can look at the properties for the volume which still list same amount of free space, but no access. It still doesn't get a drive letter. About the only interaction I currently have with the disk is the ability to change the volume label. It didn't have one before but I can change that to whatever I want now so there is some very limited interaction available.
Here is all the info I can get about the existing partitions:
Volume____PartType____Status____Size MB_____PartSect__#____StartSect______TotalSects
__________Unallocated__Pri__________7.8_____None____--__________63_________16,065
__________NTFS________Pri_____39,072.1_____0_______0_______16,128_____80,019,702
(these forums don't appear to have a
Code:
type function, hence the underscores to try and recreate the table)
Now I don't know that much about low level formatting on a disk and only enough knowledge of partitioning for your "basic" poweruser type person so I'm pretty much just speculating but I have one hopeful theory so far... My best guess is the change in the drives settings makes it unworkable for a windows or dos system due to their somewhat specific (read: inflexible) nature, and maybe, just maybe, if I were to try to mount the disk in Linux I wouldn't have a problem? I have never personally used linux as this is a family computer that i'm still on and windows provides problem enough for the rest of my family, but I was planning to try it out once my new system arrives (I mentioned that the harddrive would be going in a new PC, and the parts for this system are being shipped here right now, should arrive by the weekend). If this is a possibility then I've got some further ideas about how to back up these files (one of which is buying a new harddrive which I will eventually be doing for more storage in my new system anyways).
Ok I better stop here.
If you've read all this, I thank you. I tend make massive posts when I've got a problem, anticipating any questions in advance so yeah. I'm rambling again here....
If you have any ideas/hints/advice/knowledge that could help me out I'd be *really* happy to hear 'em.
Update: I should add that I'm running WinXP Pro. It was suggested that the problem might be having multiple primary partitions and while I understand Win9X doesn't handle them I was led to believe by partition magic that nt/xp/etc didn't share this limitation...
Thanks in advance,
Krage
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