Name: CK Date: March 10, 2002 at 23:52:52 Pacific Subject: 2 Primary Partitions on 1 Hard Drive
Comment:
Currently I have 2 primary partitions on 1 hard drive and it's been causing me problems. the 2nd primary partition has all the mp3s and video files I need. and the only way I can see it is from DOS. I have tried accessing the drive from Windows (98, ME and XP) and they all asked me whether I want to format it or not. I have tried using Partition Magic 7.0 to convert it back to logical drive or just do anything with it, and ended up with an Error Message 3 of Not Enough Memory. I don't think the memory thing is causing me the problem as I have 512mb SDRAM which has been working fine for 4 months.
The only way I can access the drive is when I make the 2nd partition "active" and boot into DOS using Windows 98/ME bootdisk. but in this way, I can only see the 2nd partition drive and not managed to see my 1st one. I have tried changing my 1st partition to logical drive but then after that, my 2nd primary partition went 'missing'. I have also tried putting on another hard drive and the 2nd primary partition went 'missing' again.
I have about 16Gb of info on that 2nd primary partition and I desperately want to retrieve back the data. I have a floppy drive but I think it would take me ages to copy everything. I also have a Acer 6x4x32 CD-Writer but I still yet to find a DOS burning software.
I'm thinking of getting a ZIP drive that works on DOS, but not sure whether such exists or not.
hope someone can help me out here.
................................................. Can only see the 2nd primary partiton when it is set 'active' but the 1st primary partition would go 'missing'.
if I set the 1st primary partition to 'active', then 2nd one disappeared.
P/S: does anyone know of any disk partition utility that can convert primary to logical drive, other than partition magic??? thx
I use V-Com's System Commander and either boot into Windows ME or into Windows XP Home Edition. Version 7.03 also comes with Partition Commander and it lets you resize, move data, etc to your paritions, and it is really odd, but I have 2 active primary partitions on my primary drive, and also have 3 logical drives (D, E, and F) in the extended partition. Works pretty cool, and it will hide or unhide partitions. I can see the Windows ME "C" drive in "my computer" in XP as drive "G", and when in Windows ME it shows up as drive "G" as well. I have been able to copy files or whole folders from one location to another. Set up drive "D" as sort of a shared spot and when I download something that can either be used in XP or ME, it goes in drive D under "Downloads Shared" folder.
Hope this give you some direction.. *S*
www.v-com.com is the web site address. Ps... you can also run unix, Linux, DOS, and several other OS's under the primary drive as well.
I think my explanation of my problem is not clear enough. but it is a very long story and now I will try to make it as short and simple as possible.
I started off with 2 partitions on my drive. 1 Primary at the "front" with 15Gb and a Logical at the "back" of 23Gb. I put Windows XP Pro on the 15Gb. Everything was doing fine until I started to messed things up. I used Partition Magic 7.0 and reduced the 1st Primary Partition to 12Gb. leaving me with 3Gb at the front. then I booted up from Linux Mandrake 8.0 CD and installed Linux using the Recommended Installation option. Basically it set up everything for me and I don't have to do much except choosing my graphics card driver, mouse, keyboard etc.
After installation was completed successfully, I rebooted my computer and tried to boot into Linux and somehow it said something about invalid file system and I wasn't able to boot into Linux GUI system. only left me with a console type of login.At this point, I realized that it's not possible to let Linux multiboot with Windows XP. So I decided to get rid of Linux. I restarted my computer and got into Windows XP. I tried to get into partition magic but somehow it said something wrong with not being able to identify the drive and so it kicked me out of the program. For no particular reason, I went into the Disk Management (found inside Right click my computer => select Management => Disk management). and I see 3 partitions. Linux 1st (could be more than 1 partition in here but I can't quite remember now), followed by 15Gb FAT32, then 23Gb FAT32. then another 23Gb (unformatted). The last one, the 23Gb unformatted, was a puzzle and somehow for no reason, probably me being stupid or something, I right clicked on it and created a Primary partition. (I think what I did here was effectively made my 2nd logical drive became Primary). After I did that, Windows went 'crazy'. things not working well. I tried to get back into Disk management and it froze. Tried to restart my computer normally and couldn't do so. ran into lots of strange errors. Finally, I had to press on the reset button and after that, things went for the worse. couldn't get back into Windows.and then here I am. the previous message I posted up there is the situation I'm facing after that.
anyway, I have given up on converting the drive to logical or doing anything to fix it. I have tried putting in another drive and that just made 23Gb data drive disappeared. I have also tried putting my 1st Hard drive to slave and used the new hard drive I borrowed as master and still the problem persists.
I'm now just going to borrow my friend's Iomega Jaz 1Gb drive and hopefully would be able to retrieve my information thru DOS.
Go into BIOS and set your settings to boot first from your CD ROM, 2nd Drive 0. Put your Windows XP into the CD Rom drive and boot from Windows XP, and continue along those lines, until it asks you if you want to repair the XP instalation, and you of course answer yes. Should "re-write" a new Master Boot Record that will let you boot into XP again. What happened is that your've corrupted your MBR and now it doesn't know anything in the way of an OS exists on your hard drive..
Once you get your XP running, if you DO use System Commander, you can go into it's menu and see the settings for the drives, and hide or unhide, delete, or resize your partitions and it will move the data around to accomodate that.
You ever wondered that drives this big AND an operating system like WinXP will use NTFS ?
Guess what a dos operating system can't read... NTFS perhaps ? thought of that ?
And how about TWO primary partitions ? isn't that impossible ? more like two PARTITIONS. ONE is always PRIMARY, the other one is NOT. DOS, at least, can;t handle this...
