i am running XP Pro SP1 on a 10gig Fat32 drive (Drive A) on one of my PC's. i needed to use this PC to access info from a 120 gig NTFS drive (Drive B, also XP pro) which i removed from another currently inoperable system (inoperable due to a problem unrelated to the 120 gig drive that i removed from that PC). i decided to install Drive B into Drive A's case as a slave (having forgotten about the differences in file systems on the two drives at the time). the installation was a success, and i browsed the files and folders on Drive B using the OS on Drive A, but realized that i needed to gain access to info on an email in OutlookExpress on Drive B. Having encountered this issue with OE before, i know it's not easy to retrieve or import old email messages from a slave drive. wishing to avoid researching the methods to "import" email data from OE from Drive B to Drive A, i decided to install boot magic on Drive A system with intent to simply boot into the Drive B's XP at startup from the BootMagic menu (dual boot system) and open OE there, thereby emulating a sort of business as usual in my main system, Drive B. with bootmagic installed on the Drive A, and the Bmagic configured to add Drive B as a bootable partition, i restarted the computer and attempted to boot into Drive B's OS. This method was a Failure! frustrated, i finally removed Drive A in an attempt to use Drive B as the master single boot drive in order to gain access to the information that i sought in Outlook. to my despair, the drive would not boot as master, even though the jumpers are properly set (none, actually on this WD drive), the BIOS recognized it and the boot sequence seemed to function normally. when Drive B didn't boot as Single Master, i inserted the BM startup disk and it found the partition w/ the OS (only partition originally on the drive, and only partition showing in BM), and i hit the number 1 to select it to boot. still not booting of course, it was at that point that i did nothing else to Drive B but switch it back to Slave to attempt to browse the folders while booting from Drive A. it was at that point that i noticed the "change" from NTFS to Fat32 crossing my fingers, i went back to using only Drive A to boot the system. success! i wanted to try using Drive B as a slave again, so i re-installed it, but, to my surprise, Drive A now sees it as Fat 32 instead of its previous NTFS, and i am unable to access the directory/ folders/ files in Drive B from Drive A. i opened boot magic again (still operating from the Drive A OS) and it is showing 1 primary and 1 extended partition on the on Drive B, but that drive had previously been only 1 partition in NTFS mode. i have a screen shot of Partition Magic's view of the drive here: http://www.e-nationmusic.com/pics/PM8_screen.jpg MY CONCLUSION: I fear that BootMagic has made some changes to the file system on Drive B. Is this possible, even though BootMagic was only "installed" on Drive A? If so, what changes might have been made? Looking on the bright side, I'm hoping that perhaps the errors are due to some mis-configuration of Drive B in it's foreign placement in Drive A's case/ motherboard, etc. any ideas? i have vast amounts of important information and media files on that drive. i need to un-do whatever damage it is that i have done during this Drive swap/ BootMagic disaster in order to access the critical data. i hope someone can please help, or at least advise me on where i should turn.

If the big drive is set as master and installed by itself, it should boot no matter what the filing system. If XP is on it, then it should find the systems hardware and install the correct drivers. I think you should take another look at the jumpers on the drive. You say WD has no jumpers to set the drive to master? That could be, but there is no logical reason that drive wouldn't boot. Use "Partition Magic" to create a new partition on the large drive. Install XP and boot to it. You should be able to get access to the other partition that way. After you have access, go to Control Panel/ System/ Advanced tab/ Startup and Recovery. Click on Setting and then in the top section click on "edit" That is your boot sequence. You can not modify the boot sequence to see the broken partition and boot to it.