Help - 120GB drive showing as unallocated space

[Kameleon]

From another forum - thought you guys might be able to help too

My disk setup was like this:

Primary IDE Master: 6GB FAT32 Windows 2000 disk
Primary IDE Slave: 120GB NTFS disk for everything other than OS

Recently my 6GB stopped allowing a slave on its channel, not a huge problem, so I put in a 4GB drive to copy its contents over and run windows off it. I first tried doing this in Windows, firstly the new D: (4GB) wasn't happy getting its contents deleted (it had an old win2k install on it) so I went in the Disk Manager and removed the partition, and made a new one. Rather predictably, I couldn't copy all the system files off my C drive, so I got a copy of Nortoon Ghost and used that in DOS.

When I booted up with my 4GB as the new primary master, everything in Windows was working perfectly, apart from that my D drive wasn't showing up. Apparently, in the Disk Manager, it's unallocated space.

This is not a good thing. There's at least 60GB of stuff that I'd really not like to lose on that drive. How do I make Windows see the drive and its contents again?

The thing with the 6GB started a while ago, the computer would be merrily running and then the hard drive would emit a loud "CLICK", then it would either freeze, BSOD or give me a most amusing error telling me off for removing my primary slave without notifying it, and if I pushed the reset button the primary slave wouldn't show up, I had to turn the power off and back on again. That was happening for months, I knew it would progress further but I couldn't be arsed to swap out the drive...when it did progress, Windows was finding loads of devices on the primary slave that were almost, but not quite, like my hard drive name, and then telling me I'd unsafely removed them. In the BIOS on reboot the entry for the primary slave was garbled, loads of weird characters.

As for making the large drive secondary master, it's a good idea, I might just do that. Don't have any other computers to fiddle with, Dad uses Macs and mates are still in Uni for a few days. Good thing I have plenty of CDRs handy, I may have to do an emergency backup...

EDIT - the 6GB was Fujitsu, the 4GB is Quantum and the 120GB is a WD1200JB.

EDIT 2 - No joy as sole secondary master. I'm gonna see what Partition Magic has to say about the drive...

[HighLordDave]

You may have to repartition your boot drive with NTFS instead of FAT32.

Also, if your drive is making odd noises (clicking, chirping, etc.), the drive itself may be failing.

[Kameleon]

Originally posted by HighLordDave
You may have to repartition your boot drive with NTFS instead of FAT32.

Also, if your drive is making odd noises (clicking, chirping, etc.), the drive itself may be failing.

Hmm, the boot drive has always worked in the past as FAT32...and if I repartition I would have to reinstall Windows which I don't particularly want to do, also if the FAT table or whatever the equivalent on NTFS is is still around on the drive somewhere I'd want to get hold of it. As for the clicking drive, yeah it's dead. I'm gonna take it apart and use its platters as frisbees in a minute.

[Mr Sleep]

I think HLD is probably right, NTFS and FAT32 aren't really compatible indexes and it's probably seeing it as unallocated space because it doesn't know the format.

[Kameleon]

Originally posted by Mr Sleep
I think HLD is probably right, NTFS and FAT32 aren't really compatible indexes and it's probably seeing it as unallocated space because it doesn't know the format.

So why has it always worked fine up till now?

[Mr Sleep]

Originally posted by Kameleon
So why has it always worked fine up till now?

I have no idea. There is also an issue with speed, your 4GB is only ever going to be ATA66 from factor where as your 120 is at least ATA100 if not 133. If you were to get another 20 or 30 gig disk that is ATA100+ then you should recieve a considerable leap in performance.

Hard Disk's are really cheap at the moment, I'd suggest you get a new smaller drive and use that as your OS disk. I wouldn't suggest using anything like partition magic to alter your disks cause that might well cause more problems.

I'd also wait for Ned who knows more about these things than I.

[Ned Flanders]

In the windows 2000 environment, NTFS5 can see FAT32. When NTFS was NT4.0, it was unable to see drives formatted with FAT32.

Your problem lies entirely with your system partition on a failing hard disk. "Clicks" are bad, m'kay. Replace the bad drive, purchase a new one. Format, reinstall win2k, and your slave will be visible again. Apps will obviously have to be reinstalled, but you'll once again have access to your data.

If you can still boot to the Fujitsu, go ahead and look in the system log in event viewer and see if there are a series of errors labeling 'disk' as the source (c drive, not d drive). This will confirm a hardware failure in the primary master.

[Kameleon]

Everything's working again. After several fun hours spent getting PartitionMagic off a friend on 56k (I really needed it, OK?), it was as simple as doing an undelete on the partition. I have no idea what happened but I have a suspicion it had something to do with my deleting the partition on my 4GB disk when it was still D: and then not restarting properly. Anyway, it's all back to normal, and never again shall I bad-mouth PM...

The system files, moved off the 6GB drive onto the 4GB, are working perfectly now - Windows is running fine. And the 6GB has a few hammer holes in it for the trouble it has caused me. I hope my other drives are taking note

[Ned Flanders]

That's cool, sounds odd though. You still might want to check into the stability of the clicking drive.

[Kameleon]

Again I repeat, the clicking drive is now in little bits on my garden patio, having been repeatedly beaten with a large hammer. Thank you and good night