hey all, new to this board...had a question for anyone who might know. recently purchased a usb2.0 external hard drive so that i could reformat my main internal drive and store files on the external. however, i just tried to access the external drive after a few days, and for some reason it's telling me my secondary partitions (1 main, 4 secondary on an 80gb drive) have not even been formatted now...although the main partition seems to be fine. i did repartition the internal drive (and never touched the external). don't ask me why, but i put my data on the secondary partitions, and now it seems i can't access them. i recently did an install of windows xp, and i did unplug the external drive also while it was off (though i don't think that would do anything). any ideas on what's going on?? help!!!

befuddled...

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When you installed XP, did you format it in NTFS? If your old partitions are FAT32 and you have your OS in NTFS, you won't be able to read or work with the old files. I think you have to set up a double boot with a FAT32 OS or convert your primary OS back to FAT32.

Budfred

ahhh....that would explain it then. cool, i'll give that a try... sounds like it should let me into my files. thanks for the info!

Hang on folks; this is turning into a nonsense thread.

First off: NTFS can "see" FAT32 and not vice versa.

Secondly: maybe others have worked out the sequence of events, which OSes have-been/are-being used and what the partition structures actually are - but I for one am confused - and btw, which is the 80gig drive?

kk
What sort of specs does the pc have?

What was on your IDE Drive (OS/OSes and partition structure) when you installed the USB Drive?

What software did you use to partition and format your USB Drive and are all the partitions on it logical ones?

When you repartitioned the IDE drive, how did you change things on it? Or do you mean you just formatted it?

When you later installed XP on the IDE drive was this a clean install, an upgrade or a dual boot?

:confused: :confused:

well...i'm still running into problems now, so here goes---

pIII 450mhz w/ a 6gb internal IDE drive originally installed with win98 upgrade, recently repartitioned w/ one primary and reformatted, and clean installed with winxp.

USB2.0 external drive 80gb w/ a primary partition and 4 secondary logical partitions, formatted through dos commands fdisk and format, and files loaded onto it through win98.


now however, it seems all 4 secondary partitions read as unformatted, though the primary partition seems fine with the fat32. i KNOW i didn't repartition all 4 secondaries...so i am stumped as to what happened.

(on another note...running into problems with my vid card and xp... though i think it's a driver issue. i did dl the nvidia drivers, though probs still exists. geforce2 mx/mx400 says it cannot start- code 10)

seem to be running into all sorts of gremlins w/ xp...i did dl the service pack too. i think i'll reinstall 98 and see what happens...

help!!!

Sorry KK by more questions?

(1) What are you using to read the partition information on the external drive?

(2) What make/model is the external - some do not recommend/support partitioning and also recommend using their own formatting software?

(3) A reinstall of Win98 on your internal sounds logical; you could always add XP as a dual boot later. At least it is the best chance of having the same setup as when you saved your data to the external in the first place.

(4) Are you sure your BIOS supports a drive of 80gig in size? If not all sorts of unexpected things could happen unless some sort of overlay, etc. is used.

BTW
Partitions may be:
Primary or Logical (the word secondary is best avoided).
The drive they are on may be on a primary or secondary IDE channel however; (or in your case on USB).
Their status can be Active, Hidden or NoStatus.
Their formats may be FAT, NTFS, etc. or Extended.

It is normal to have all the logical partitions on an extended partition (which itself is one of the four permissible active partions on a drive and which is neither FAT nor NTFS as such).

Unless you are using them for an OS or an extended partition, it is best to avoid having an active partition on a second HDD, if only because of the way drives are mapped on the pc.

Hope we can help you regain access to your data. Good luck for now.

judging by the vintage of your CPU, this by Paul is where problem lies.
(4) Are you sure your BIOS supports a drive of 80gig in size? If not all sorts of unexpected things could happen unless some sort of overlay, etc. is used.
What brand is the 80G drive?

(1) i tried it both in xp and dos.

(2) the external's just a hard drive in a case i think...don't know what brand, but i followed the instructions for partitioning (either through dos or windows). i'll pop it open and see who made it...

(3) working on the win98 reinstall.

(4) for some reason, my bios is password protected...don't know how to fix that. it may be coincidence, but all my probs started with xp. i had been using the external for 3 weeks with no probs.

i did all the partitioning and formatting for the external in dos... so i kinda suspect xp is my main problem. i'm stumped on my video card prob also...which started with the xp install too. the bios is another matter i wish i could get into...any suggestions on the password problem?

hopefully this win98 install will fix everything... have you guys heard of any major problems with xp??

thanks for the help and suggestions...

To eliminate the password protection on the BIOS, you typically have to reset the BIOS. This is usually done with a jumper on the motherboard. You take the jumper off of pins 1 and 2, then put it on 2 and 3 for a minute of so, then replace on 1 and 2. I think it is usually JP1. If you can't find that or your MB doesn't have it, you can also remove the battery for a day or so and it will reset.

As for problems with XP, there are many. The biggest one is hardware and software incompatibility.

Budfred