i converted my 80gig ntfs hd to fat32 so that i could access and modify it in my mandrake linux. i did it with partition magic ver8.0. everything seemed to go well but when i looked at my folders in the hard drive i saw that some of them had these weird characters in them. for example: "pics" folder was now "PICS. á" folder and "docs" folder was now "DOCS. á" whenever i click on one of these folders it gives me this error-- "G:\PICS. á refers to a location that is unavailable. It could be on a hard drive on this computer, or on a network. Check to make sure that the disk is properly inserted, or that you are connected to the Internet or your network, and then try again. If it still cannot be located, the information might have been moved to a different location. " so check to make sure it was connected properly and it was. i can access some of the folders (theones that dont have the weird characters). this would lead me to belive that it is connected hardware-wise. i did a "chkdsk g: /f" and chkdsk keeps on shutting itself off. it will fix some of the errors and then it just stops. i ran it in safemode and the same thing. diskeeper shows that about 1/3 of the drive is green -- aka:"system files". so im running out of ideas. i really need those files on there. im a photographer and those "pics" are about 3 years worth of work. any ideas?

If you have an old hard disk that has an XP os, change it to master mode, and your new hard disk to slave mode. Boot your old HD and copy all the pics from the slave HD. Repartition your slave HD by booting into DOS mode and use fdisk.

i guess i didnt make myself clear enough. i have three hard drives right now. my OS hard drive is perfectly fine. i cannot use fdisk to just repartition my G drive (the one that has the pics folder) because i need to get the information off there. and even if i tried to take the pics folder and put it on one of my other hard drives-- i couldnt because -- according to windows xp -- the pics folder does not exist. it calls it "PICS. á" -- which obviously does not exist. when i click on "PICS. á" it says that it is not there.. well i hope this cleared up any miscomunication problems. thanks!

if i read you right, then ur main master HD is fat32 and your slave (with the pics) is NTFS? If so, then you cannot read an NTFS from a FAT 32. you'll have to change it back. am i wrong in my thinking of your setup??

i have three hard drives. 30gig -- ntfs--- operating system (windows xp pro) hd- master connected to mobo 60gig - two 30gig partitions - one ntfs one fat32 - connected as master on pci ide extension card 80gig - 1 partition - just recently changed from ntfs to fat32 - connected as master to motherboard - this is the one that i cannot read my pics folder in. the pics folder is in this harddrive.

man, this IS a pickle! if you right click on the PICS folder, do you get accurate properties? if so, thats a start. Have you tried moving it to a diff partiton through DOS? you might try running attrib on the folder in dos. what you want to do is browse to the folder and type attrib -r -s -h. Might work, bot prob not. have you tried setting the drive back to ntfs? (I dont use partition magic so am not sure of its capabilites.)

Go to your hotmail account and find the subject "about your problem".