Xp lost my drive

[cbsmith]

I need help. A lot of it.

I have a 100gig drive with 5 partitions on it. My computer locked up and I had to do a hard reboot. When it came back I wasn't about ot get into any of my programs. All of the ones that are stored on E: drive. I went into Explorer and it says that drive E: is not formatted when I try to access it. I went into Disk Management and it says that all the drives are healthy. It says that there is no file system for Drive E: and that it is 100% empty.

What happened? Is there any way to get the data back? What programs can I try?

Thanks,

Chris

 

[Sapilas]

was it a Fat32 partition or a NTFS one ?

fat32 does it sometimes.....

and you either you use "fixit utilities" to save anything you might recover and then reformat,
do a bad sector test and if your hdd is damage you just replace it...
otherwise you repartition and you are up and running again..

but it might be something else wrong . . . good luck..

 

[cbsmith]

It is a FAT32 partition.

Disk Managaement in XP says that itis healthy, just has no file system. It is a Western Digital Drive. I ran their utilities and it didn't read any error codes from the drive.

What kinds of utilities can I use to try to recover data? That drive was just my programs drive, so I have a copy of everything that was lost. But I figure I will need to format and reinstall XP since XP still has all my registry information. Or would I just be able to format that drive and reinstall all of the programs again, just using the same directory structure as before. Assuming the drive is okay.

Thanks,

Chris

 

[Sapilas]

what ???

you install the programs in a different drive than the operation system ?

I just have a seperate partition for mydocuments and non system-files.. in case something happes to reinstall os and apps and not lose my personal files...


FIXIT utilities ... Is a software you can try.. but if your partition table if f**ked..
u might not get any better..


If you had not important files there then you better recreate the faulty partition and format it . .


If I was you, I would do a complete repartitioning (if you have no files to loose)
and remember you better use NTFS next time is much more stable and reliable


.. (unless you have a linux that you wanna access the fat32 partition).

 

[cbsmith]

I have about 16 gigs of data on another partition on the same drive. I would like to keep that. I had just installed XP a couple weeks ago and wanted ot make sure it was stable and that I didn't want to go back to 98 before I converted the drives to NTFS.

So, you recommend that I blow all the partitions away and start from scratch? I guess I could go to my brothers house and plug it into his network and transfer the files to his comouter and then format and then copy them back.

Thanks,

Chris

 

[MrDudeMan]

yeah FAT32 blows goat ass, it really does


i recall it being a little bit faster, but in terms of stability and reliability....its not even in the same ballpark as NTFS

i dont really know what to tell you, but it sounds like you may have either lost all your stuff, or maybe it just got confused and its time to get rid of some of those partitions

if i was you, i would do what sapilas said...1 partition for my documents, 1 partition for OS and Apps, and 1 partition for random garbage...it will probably be the fastest that way

 

[MrDudeMan]

plus, with a 100gb drive, all the partitions will be at least 30gb, which is nearing the FAT32 capacity anyhow, and for a good reason


i would definitly recommend using NTFS and getting rid of a few of those partitions

 

[mee987]

<< all the partitions will be at least 30gb, which is nearing the FAT32 capacity >>


i think the 32gb limit of fat32 is only a limit of win2k/xp's fat32

while i personally dont like having a bunch of partitions, this is not the reason for your problems. having multiple partitions does not "confuse" your system or make it more likely to fail.

 

[MrDudeMan]

i didnt mean windows got confused

i meant it all got confused and maybe tons of file movements parsed up all the info to the point where it messed it all up

i know what im trying to say, just having a hard time getting it out

 

[cbsmith]

I am going to unload all my data to my brothers computer and then blow everything away. I am going to make everything NTFS this time as well.

I am also goingto change around my partitions. only have 3 this time.

Chris