System: notebook (Fujitsu FMV Biblo MG12B/M) Win 2000 OS Partition Magic 8.0 System Commander 7 1 Physical harddisk (Drive E: Primary NTFS active partition Drive C: non-primary NTFS non-active partition 4GB of unallocated spaces) Problem : Drive C becomes non-accessible. When clicked, Windows said it is not formatted and suggest me to format it, but I have important data on it. What happen: Apart from the drives E and C, I have created a FAT32 Primary partition from the unallocated spaces (because I was installing BootMagic which required FAT32 Primary partition for its installation). Then I reboot. Then, my Drive C became Partition Type 17 and unreadible by Windows. I couldn't unhide it using PartitionMagic because when I selected the partition, the unhide menu item is 'grayed out'. So I installed a software callled Paragon Partition Manager and changed the Partition Type to 7. Current Status: Still unreadible by Windows and when I view Drive C under PQInfo (PartitionMagic) it says the partition type is 'QNX, UN*X' and status is 'Pri' Others: I tried to use fdisk but fdisk do not run under Win2000 and I do not have a floopy drive to boot to DOS to use fdisk under DOS. Question: What is the problem and if you know please tell me how to get me out of this mess. (I suspect it is some problem with multiple primary partiton and hidden partition problem) Many thanks to all who try to help me. **Please email to anthony.mak@iname.com Anthony Mak

DISKPART is same as that of fdisk .. try this out may be your problem will be solved or the last option is boot fron erdd ( emergency disk repair ) to solve the problem .. pankaj

Dear pankaj_77sethi, I do not know erdd. Would you mind telling me where I can get it? And, how I can use it to solve my problem? Because I have little experience in partitioning and with little information I am afraid I might make the problem worse. It seems DISKPART can only create or delete a partiton, but I do not want to delete my C partition which is unreadible by windows at the moment. Anthony Mak

hey, you lucky guy, I don't know how could this happen but I have to tell this... about 2 hours ago, my hard drive happened to have the same behavior under windows 2000 and became "unaccessible". I can't see anything I did is wrong, maybe not as exactly as you did, in my case, I did some resizing/moving & merging before I ended up with only C: (primary) readable. I decided the quickest way to slove the problem is to search the web and hoping somebody else has this problem too. In fact, I am right but all I got is a question, not the answer. So... I have no choice but to use PQ again ( although I hate it ) believing that PQ is a stupid crap but all the data is still there just I can't see them. Never try to use other software to fix it, b.c that could be a real disaster! After a while, I found the solution: 1.try to mergy your unreadable drive to any readable drive ( in your case, C: -> E:, NOT the other way around!) 2.sometimes it complains that there is not enough space, then resize other partition to give enough space to the partition that needs more space 3.After rebooting, you will see your C: becomes a part of E: ( named as E:\C folder) and all your "important data" is still there! important thing, don't panic, it may seems horriable, but after all, all this is just a "MAGIC"!

Dear tangseng, I really thanks you for your suggestion. It gave me a hope. But unfortunately, it doesn't work for me. In these few days, I had already use a software called Paragon Partition Manager to change my C partition from type 7 to type 17 because as I read type 7 is hidden NTFS and type 17 is unhidden NTFS. I had tried out your idea. And, to limit the scope of the problem, I also use Paragon to change the type back to type 7 (hidden NTFS) which was the original state when I first found I couldn't access the partition. After setting it to type 7, I tried to merge C to E. But in Partition Magic 8.0, the merge wizard didn't allow me to choose C as the "first partition to merge". I also tried to merge E to C, but this time C did not appear in the list of "second partiton to merge" list. I am all ears if you have any other suggestions else for me to try. Anthony Mak