Format e: ? please nooooo!!!!

[Technoid]

I just remembered:
Once when I partitioned with Fdisk and had 3 partitions, the two second ones disapered when I removed the first one...
Had something to do with the stupid Extended and logical partition system MS wants you to use....

[MPR]

I hate extended partitions.

[Sasq]

As an extra idea...

Go to segate and d/l their drive testing software. (I don't know the software however usual way is it will make a boot disk)

Just check the drive to make sure there are no errors or anything

[Petri]

i tried seagates own powermax disk utility and it won't test
drive before its formatted

i´ll give disk to my friend who works in sw company and
maybe one of their guys/girls can recover disk or find data from it.

thanks to all

well, at least i have good reason to go and have a few beers!

cheers

[az]

It looks as though your partitions have been formatted without you knowing it...

AZ

[Petri]

AZ
crossed my mind too but how and when ?
i think even windowsanyofthem should ask first ?



( and when looking from properties disk is RAW = not
formatted )

[az]

Windows should ask. But a virus won't.

"format e: /autotest >NUL" in your autoexec.bat will format, and won't ask or show you.

AZ

[SuRGV]

I had similar problem. My computer suddenly restarted when I was browsing the Net (eDonkey was running too..hehe) and it then failed to detect any HDD on my computer.
I had to turn if off for few minutes and turned on again. BIOS and Win98 bootdisk could see both of my HDDs fine but WinXP said my second HDD, which is Fujitsu (single drive, not partitioned), was not formatted !!
After copying all of my files in Fujitsu to my Quantum drive and reformatted it in DOS, it worked fine.
You may try it.
And I have the same MB with you.
SuRGV

[MPR]

I think Petri said that his DOS bootdisk couldn't read the drives either...bad sign. It seems like somehow the partitions got deleted (the logical partitions). From what Petri described it sounds like the extended partition is still there. You could check it using fdisk. Just don't change anything.

Now that I think of it - my work XP machine lost my C: partition and I thought that my drive had gone bad. I didn't try a DOS bootdisk because the partition was NTFS but I moved the drive off my onboard Promise Controller to my onboard IDE and the partition was recognized and XP booted right up. I have an Asus motherboard with onboard promise ide.

[Alfie]

You can format the drives while in XP,you may want to try that,it will assure a compatible format.

[Wombat]

What about Partition Magic? Isn't it supposed to be able to recognize and repair bad tables?

[rubank]

Petri,

it does sound like your file allocation table is corrupt.
Try downloading Hex Workshop from www.bpsoft.com, with which you can check the sectors of your drive.

If your sector "0" is corrupt you should have a copy of the FAT in sector 6. (If you take a look at sector "0" on your C drive you can see what it should look like though it´s not identical)
If so you can copy this sector to sector "0" and you should be able to fire up the drive.

rubank