Need help to recover data

[elasurj]

I have a problem with my Hard Disk. One of them is of a FAT32 and the other is of NTFS. The one with FAT32 is the one containing the Operating System Win98 SE and the other Contains my programs that i do not want to loose. When the Computer boots i recieve a Message "NVRAM cleared by jumpers". I try to switch off the Computer and back agains the same thing happens and it tells me to Press F1 for setup or Esc to boot. When i press F1, it continues to load the Operating System and when i Single click My Computer Icon i only see one drive i.e. FAT32.

This is how my Drives are configured. The FAT32 is the Master and the NTFS is a slave connected together with the CD ROM.

What can i do to Access my programmes on the NTFS drive because i don not want to loose them.

Thanks

[pave_spectre]

elasurj please start your own thread about your problem rather than trying to get help in someone elses. It will make it much easier for people to concentrate their help.

[PrntRhd]

I split this off so it can be dealt with seperately. Please follow Pave's advice and start a new thread for a new problem, then reply in the same thread until the problem is fixed.

[david eaton]

If I understand you correctly, you are running Win98 on a FAT32 drive, which is fine. Unfortunately, Win98 cannot access NTFS formatted partitions/drives.

While there are programs that can, reputedly convert from NTFS to FAT32, if any errors occur during the conversion the data will most likely end up corrupted or gone completely.

If the data on that disk is valuable, then I suggest that you either
a: Install WinXP on your boot drive or
b: Find a computer with WinXP already on it, connect your NTFS drive as a slave, and burn the datafiles to CD. ( That would be worth doing anyway before trying any of the conversion programs.)

While this would be fine for datafiles, programs cannot be transferred in this way, as they need to be installed correctly so the operating system can recognise them.

[Paul Komski]

The "simplest"/safest way to convert from NTFS to FAT is to copy all the files (or just a selected directory using xcopy or xxcopy) from the NTFS partition to another FAT partition using an OS (NT/2K/XP/Linux) that can read both types of format. There is no danger to the data if one does that. The problems can arise when converting in situ using a program like Partition Magic rather than copying files. In situ reformatting is particularly fickle if any file encryption was in use on the NTFS partition.

Partition Magic 8 has a "browse" function which will let you access both NTFS and Hidden partitions from within Win98 and you can then copy and paste the files safely that way. There are also other utilities and NTFS readers that a bit of Googling should no doubt throw up.