NTFS can't read FAT32

I have a 2nd hard drive...that I use on my bench machine. I've got it
set up as FAT32...so that I can put experimental programs on it...and
access it no matter what drive I boot into. Its the slave on the
secondary controller...master is the CDRW.

My boot drive is the master(single) on the primary...no slave.

All of a sudden, I can't access that 2nd drive with any NTFS boot
drive. I get an error message that the drive needs to be formatted.

If I boot with a Win95, Win98, or Win98SE drive, I have no problem. I
can access the secondary drive...delete, move, run programs from the C
drive, etc. All the data is still there.

If I boot with an NTFS drive...XPsp1, XPsp2, W2Ksp4...I get the error
message. If I go into disk management, the drive shows up there. I
just can't access it.

I've tried uninstalling the drive...with no success. It gets
recognized on the reboot...but it still wants to reformat.

Anybody got any ideas?


Have a nice one...

Trent

Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!




Have a nice one...

Trent

Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!

Trent©

See if you can boot to the recovery console on the XP drive, and then try
running chkdsk on the FAT32 drive from the command line. Perhaps something
is a little screwy with that drive for *all* NT based OSes to ignore it. I
doubt it has anything at all to do with NTFS. It would probably have the
same trouble if you had a WinXP install on a FAT32 primary drive.


...
"Trent©" <> wrote in message
news:...
>I have a 2nd hard drive...that I use on my bench machine. I've got it
> set up as FAT32...so that I can put experimental programs on it...and
> access it no matter what drive I boot into. Its the slave on the
> secondary controller...master is the CDRW.
>
> My boot drive is the master(single) on the primary...no slave.
>
> All of a sudden, I can't access that 2nd drive with any NTFS boot
> drive. I get an error message that the drive needs to be formatted.
>
> If I boot with a Win95, Win98, or Win98SE drive, I have no problem. I
> can access the secondary drive...delete, move, run programs from the C
> drive, etc. All the data is still there.
>
> If I boot with an NTFS drive...XPsp1, XPsp2, W2Ksp4...I get the error
> message. If I go into disk management, the drive shows up there. I
> just can't access it.
>
> I've tried uninstalling the drive...with no success. It gets
> recognized on the reboot...but it still wants to reformat.
>
> Anybody got any ideas?
>
>
> Have a nice one...
>
> Trent
>
> Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!
>
>
>
>
> Have a nice one...
>
> Trent
>
> Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!

Trent© <> wrote in
news::

> Anybody got any ideas?
>

The fact you are booting off of an NTFS partition means /nothing/. The
problem is NT based OSs think there is a problem with the drive. You
should first run a scandisk from 98 and correct any errors, then run a
chkdsk /x d: (or whatever drive letter) from within Windows NT/2000/XP and
see what errors they find.

On Sun, 14 Nov 2004 07:23:41 +0000, Jim Berwick <> wrote:

>Trent© <> wrote in
>news: :
>
>> Anybody got any ideas?
>>
>
>The fact you are booting off of an NTFS partition means /nothing/. The
>problem is NT based OSs think there is a problem with the drive.

Then it must have SOMETHING to do with NTFS! lol

>You
>should first run a scandisk from 98 and correct any errors,

I already did most of the basics, Jim...including that one.

>then run a
>chkdsk /x d: (or whatever drive letter) from within Windows NT/2000/XP and
>see what errors they find.

I never run chkdsk on a FAT drive, Jim. I always run scandisk. But I
tried it just for grins. And I've also done it on all the other NT
drives. No luck.


Have a nice one...

Trent

Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!

On Sun, 14 Nov 2004 00:04:16 -0500, "Thor" <> wrote:

>See if you can boot to the recovery console on the XP drive, and then try
>running chkdsk on the FAT32 drive from the command line. Perhaps something
>is a little screwy with that drive for *all* NT based OSes to ignore it. I
>doubt it has anything at all to do with NTFS. It would probably have the
>same trouble if you had a WinXP install on a FAT32 primary drive.

Thanks, you guys. No luck, though.

Do any of you guys remember the names of any of the programs that
would compare the drive BIOS against the mainboard BIOS? I think I've
still got the program...but I don't remember the name.

Its got to have something to do with where NT is looking for its info
on the Win drive.


Have a nice one...

Trent

Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!

Trent© <> wrote in
news::

>>The fact you are booting off of an NTFS partition means /nothing/.
>>The problem is NT based OSs think there is a problem with the drive.
>
> Then it must have SOMETHING to do with NTFS! lol

I can't even tell if this is a joke or not. NT != NTFS. You can run
Windows NT/2000/XP without any NTFS partitions.

>>You
>>should first run a scandisk from 98 and correct any errors,
>
> I already did most of the basics, Jim...including that one.

I don't read all (any) followups to an article before replying. Aside
from that, is there a problem with two people saying the same thing?

>>then run a
>>chkdsk /x d: (or whatever drive letter) from within Windows NT/2000/XP
>>and see what errors they find.
>
> I never run chkdsk on a FAT drive, Jim. I always run scandisk. But I
> tried it just for grins. And I've also done it on all the other NT
> drives. No luck.

If you are running say, XP, and there is a problem with a drive with a
FAT/32 FS, you run chkdsk. chkdsk is not a tool designed only for NTFS
file systems, it is the Windows NT equivalent of Scandisk.

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 08:02:08 +0000, Jim Berwick <> wrote:

>> I never run chkdsk on a FAT drive, Jim. I always run scandisk. But I
>> tried it just for grins. And I've also done it on all the other NT
>> drives. No luck.
>
>If you are running say, XP, and there is a problem with a drive with a
>FAT/32 FS, you run chkdsk. chkdsk is not a tool designed only for NTFS
>file systems, it is the Windows NT equivalent of Scandisk.

No...not by a long shot. CHKDSK misses a LOT of errors when using it
on a FAT system.

I boot into a floppy and run scandisk from there.

Update...when running NT on a FAT32 drive, no problem accessing that
other FAT32 drive.

Its the NT file system that's havin' the problem with that drive.

I tried Thor's advice of booting into the console and running CHKDSK
from there. Error tells me that the drive has unrecoverable
errors...and won't run.

It doesn't, of course...because I can do anything to/with it as long
as I don't boot from an NT system.

And a full Spinrite showed no errors.

Very interesting problem.


Have a nice one...

Trent

Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!

Trent© <> wrote in
news::

> Its the NT file system that's havin' the problem with that drive.
>

No, it isn't. It doesn't mean crap what file system the OS boots from, it
can't read your FAT32 partition because there is a problem with the FAT32
partition. Forget the NTFS partition exists, it is not part of the
problem.

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 19:14:05 +0000, Jim Berwick <> wrote:

>Trent© <> wrote in
>news: :
>
>> Its the NT file system that's havin' the problem with that drive.
>>
>
>No, it isn't. It doesn't mean crap what file system the OS boots from, it
>can't read your FAT32 partition because there is a problem with the FAT32
>partition. Forget the NTFS partition exists, it is not part of the
>problem.

Read my initial post again, Jim.


Have a nice one...

Trent

Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!

Trent© <> wrote in message
news:...
> I have a 2nd hard drive...that I use on my bench machine. I've got it
> set up as FAT32...so that I can put experimental programs on it...and
> access it no matter what drive I boot into. Its the slave on the
> secondary controller...master is the CDRW.
>
> My boot drive is the master(single) on the primary...no slave.
>
> All of a sudden, I can't access that 2nd drive with any NTFS boot
> drive. I get an error message that the drive needs to be formatted.
>
> If I boot with a Win95, Win98, or Win98SE drive, I have no problem. I
> can access the secondary drive...delete, move, run programs from the C
> drive, etc. All the data is still there.
>
> If I boot with an NTFS drive...XPsp1, XPsp2, W2Ksp4...I get the error
> message. If I go into disk management, the drive shows up there. I
> just can't access it.
>
> I've tried uninstalling the drive...with no success. It gets
> recognized on the reboot...but it still wants to reformat.
>
> Anybody got any ideas?
>
>
> Have a nice one...
>
> Trent
>
> Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!
>
>
>
>
> Have a nice one...
>
> Trent
>
> Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!

Assign a drive letter to the cdrw above what might be required for the
secondary slave hd...