Partition problems

[devildell]

hello all,
i have yet another question for you. the other day i diecided to make a new partition on my drive so that i could better orginize my files. so i used my copy of partition magic and cut my 30GB harddrive to 19GB for windows and 11GB for storage the problem was that when i rebooted it began to load windows but a critical system error occured. and the system kept rebooting. (i kinda expected this to happen) no big deal i would just reinstall. however i was thinking last night and the fact that i had a website i was working on stuck in the windows XP that would not boot. so i load up recovery concole but it will not let me access or copy the my documents folder. it will only put me in the c:\windows directory. not only that, but it would not let me copy any file from C:\windows to my storage drive E: (that i had created). i can see the files with dir but cant do anything with them.

so i installed windows on my storage drive E: hopeing that i could access it from windows. but the drive dosn't appear??????

i just need a little input or advice..... i am not to knowlegable when it comes to the recovery concole, but i played around with it and got to know it but dident get anywhere.....

oh yea both drives can be seen in the recovery concole but can't be seen in windows.... they are both NTFS

[ss2chef]

In your new Windows install, are you looking in the "disk management" section of admin tools or just in my computer?

[nihil]

Hi,

1. What release/version of Partition Manager is it?
2. Can you boot into safe mode.
3. Have you tried to do a system repair/recovery, or just access your files.

[ard]

i have one idea. try to delete all partitions when installing winxp. there is one option where you can delete, create ant manage your partitions. try to delete all and create new ones. it will automatically format it to ntfs, but you will lose all your files.
maybe the partition magic made some errors? maybe windows can't load with new settings.. strange.

edit --
there are some bootable "read ntfs" file systems like win98 startup disc. it loads modified DOS that can read files in ntfs filesystem. try to add one more hdd and to copy files from your damaged disc into new one.

[pooh sun tzu]

How old is your partition magic? I constantly use PM 8 and resize NTFS based partitions all the time, and it works like a charm for me. The reason I ask is because a few earlier versions had problems with resizing.

You see, resizing a partition doesn't just entail resizing it. It means that you have to move the files around as nessessary to fit into the appropriate partition (you can't do this manually, but PM can) and -then- resize your partition. Otherwise when you resize your partitions without moving the files first they are scattered across two different partitions and thus both remain unreable.

The reason I say this is because some PM older versions did not properly move all of the files. When it rebooted and preformed the operations while still in DOS like mode, did you notice it say anything about the filesystem and/or moving around the files?

[nihil]

Pooh is right,

You should certainly NOT use PM at a release of less than 8.0 with Windows XP & NTFS

[devildell]

it use PM 8.0, i cannot access windows in safemode. but why dident my second install of windows on a diffrent drive partition (on another NTFS partition) not pick up the curupt windows file system

[rapier57]

Mostly because you installed a separate Windows on a logically separate partition. And, now you have two bootable partitions. If you run Fdisk from a bootable floppy, you can change the active partition and the system will then boot to that partition.

[CybertecOne]

I also use PM 8 and have never had any problems with it.

however, this is what may have happened. if you havent defraged your HDD in a long time, the files would be scattered throughout the partition. when you resiezed it, because all the data wasnt defragmented some of it was 'cut-off' and destroyed when you moved the partition boundaries.

Thats one of the posibilites. Make sure you defrag your drive before changin partitions etc.

As for repairing it. the only thing i can think of is the recovery CD and/or console. if the error comming up is something like, 'unmountable boot' or 'unmountable drive' or along those lines, you may have corrupted your bootsector. to fix that little prob, boot from your xp cd, go into recovery console, and type "fix MBR" [enter] then "fix boot" [enter] and it should run fine. if that doesnt work do the same but reverse the order of commands, (it depends of what exactly was damaged to which order would work).


CTO

[devildell]

thanks, but i think your where right, my drive may have been fragmented. anyway i decieded to just rebuild the website that i was trying to retreave. thanks for all your suggestions, and help...............................