Two Drives - 1 NTFS and 1 FAT32

I just built a new PC for a friend using Xp Pro.

I installed it using NTFS and then added his old hard drive as it has many files he wants. I can't access the drive as it says it needs formatting - I realised it must be FAT32 and installed Partition Magic to check.

It indeed is FAT32. I want to convert it to NTFS without losing data (old operating system does not matter though), but the only option I get is to convert to a logical partition. Convert to NTFS is greyed out.

Do I have to do this first and then can I convert - or can I not convert this and the data is unobtainable?

TiA
Silver

EDIT - I read about using the Xp Convert tool which sounds simple, unsure why I cant do this in Partition Magic - hope the disk is OK. Should I be able to see the contents of the FAT32 drive already?

 

Hello Silver,

You should be able to see the contents already.

My Computer > Manage > Disk Management: how does the drive show up?

To check the drive, see if the Drive's OEM has a disk checking utility.

There really is no reason to convert the drive to NTFS unless its over 80 gig, below that FAT32 is just as or more efficient as NTFS is.

Is this set up a mixture of SATA and ATA?

The hardware people will look at this.

Regards - Charles

 

If the hard drive is ok and connected properly then you shouldn’t have a problem with it being FAT32. All you should have to do is assign a drive letter to it in Disk Management for XP to see and access the files on it. If it’s currently showing in My Computer and has a drive letter, then something else is wrong.

Have you connected it up properly for a slave/second drive "“ if it’s IDE are the jumper settings correct and is it on the right plug on the ribbon cable. Is the computer bios reporting it ok, is this set to auto-detect?

If the drive is over 137gigs in size, do you have SP2 installed in XP?

Did the old drive have Norton Systemworks installed and so GoBack? If Partition Magic is reporting the drive as FAT32 then it’s unlikely a GoBack problem. Did he have any other backup/restore/imaging/bootmanager software installed?

Was the hard drive bigger then the computer was originally designed for? If so then perhaps translation software (a Dynamic Drive Overlay) is on the hard drive. The common ones are MaxBlast and EZ-Drive. Does he remember ever having to install something like this?

I wouldn’t try converting to NTFS to try and cure the problem, you might trash the drive.

 

Thanks guys.

The disk is small - about 20 gigs and shows fine in Disk Management except under "file system" it is blank?

It says it is healthy and active, but does show 100% free space there - where as Partition magic and My Computer show it as 100% full.

I do have a combination of SATA and IDE (the FAT32 is IDE).

I will play around a little. It is set as a slave top a CD Drive which is probably not best, but is on correct ribbon connector.

 

ok - I have no tried the FAT32 drive in my pc in place of my non system storage drive (also IDE) and Windows cant even find it as master and I get a BIOS SMART error with it at slave.

I think it may be broken?

 

DON'T FORMAT IT!!!

If the old computer was working, you probably can still get files from the IDE drive. If the old computer still works, and can see the disk (even if it won't boot, but hopefully it can. at least from a floppy) you should be able to retrieve importamt information in DOS, or in windows if it boots. Or try the drive in still another computer. Remember, jumpering is all important - check online at the disk manufacturer's site.

You can temporarily install a CD/DVD writer IN THE OLD COMPUTER and copy files to your heart's content. Just borrow the drive from another (e.g. your) computer. It's common to use disks temporarily; just lie the open box motherboard down and only attach the cables with the disk lying in the box, carefully avoiding shorts.

 

well I am not sure that the old PC did boot up, I know he had a lot pf problems with it -that prompted the new purchase.

Can't see a lot of choice - any ideas will be gratefully recieved, but I am pretty sure that this disk will not boot or be seen by Windows XP....I am not greatly skilled in using DOS, so I might be snookered there.

I won't give up though - could always try the NTFS conversion see what happens then!!!

 

I suggest running TESTDISK http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html. It says it will run under XP but I've only ran it under dos. Read the how to use, it is not as hard to use as it looks.

Very likely if you try to convert to NTFS all data will be lost.