Resolved? - Win98 and Hard Disc Partitions
Tuesday, October 23, 2007 at 9:04 am
Windows 98 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Alan
(16 messages posted)
Hi Bob,
Thanks for your response.
I haven't done anything about the rogue partitions (yet), because it seems to be
unnecessary, the "problem" part of it having gone away...
I have now installed BootIt on a second partition on my primary master physical drive,
so that I could inspect (and if desired, alter) the partitions. After re-formatting
the first partition on this drive I have installed Windows XP Home SP2 and this becomes
my C: drive (still using FAT32).
When I look at the drives with BootIt, my second physical drive (which is the secondary
master) shows two partitions, the first being 2GB and having a file system identified
as "EZ Drive"; the second being 4MB and FAT16. On the screen for this drive it says
"errors exist".
When I start Windows XP it assigns drive letter E: to the 2GB first partition on
this drive and all my files and folders are visible; under properties WinXP says
this is a FAT32 partition.
So I can now use the drive OK, and it looks as though BootIt is not reading the MBR
correctly. However, if I boot to floppy and run FDISK, I find that it too shows
an anomolous description for the drive - in this case it identifies a first 2GB partition
as "Non DOS" and a second 4MB partition as "PRI DOS" (and assigns a drive letter
to it).
Could all this be something to do with the way a drive of capacity >32GB has to be
prepared to be accessible to older OS's like Win98?
My current plan of attack is to copy everything from the drive onto a backup, then
reformat and copy the files back again.
Does anyone have any views on:
(a) Why should FDISK report the partitions wrongly?
(b) How does WinXP manage to read the drive?
(c) Why does BootIt also report the partitions wrongly?
(d) Is there something else i can use to examine the drive and repair it if necessary?
Incidentally, I have tried Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics and there isn't
anything which examines the file structure, etc.
On Tuesday, October 23, 2007 at 12:03 am, bob wells wrote:
>Fdisk will safely remove the Partition, but all you will have is 2GB unallocated
>space.
I see, so there is no benefit in doing this unless I can remove both partitions and
create a new (larger) one - which I can't do with FDISK until the data has been backed
up.
>FDISK CANNOT be used on any partition, for any reason, other than checking the status
>of the Partition without, TOTAL LOSS OF DATA.
>
>You cannot use FDISK to merge PARTITIONS.
Allegedly, BootIt can do this without loss of data - but I'm not going to risk it.
>Your EXTRA Partition did not come from a failed installation of Windows on Drive
>C:\ unless C:\ did not have enough space for the OS files.
>
>You would have gotten an error message if enough space was not available during
set-up
>of the OS.
It looks like a mystery which will remain unsolved?
>Copy the contents of the D:\ drive to other media/Drive, then use fdisk to partition
>and format the D:\ drive, and copy the data back to D:\
>
Will do.
>AGAIN, Running FDISK will DESTROY ALL DATA on the Partition/Drive. IT cannot make
>un-accessable data, accessable again.
>
Many thanks for the clear warning.
>BW
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