Really strange problem

[vilejames]

Background info to problem

split hardrive into 6 sections: cdefgh
I then had a cd drive: i
and a cdrw: j

I now boot up my computer, the cd drive and cdrw now take up h and i instead of i and j. The h drive is now nowhere to be found?
All programmes that were their are now no longer working. I seem to have lost 7gb of my harddrive. Any ideas?

 

[Inaris]

what OS are you using?

It's possible that the drive lost it's letter and that it's just waiting for the computer to assign a new one. This has been known to happen.
And why did you split your drive up like that? does it help you with something?

If your using win2k or xp: right click my computer, go to manage and then to Disk management. There you can see if you have any unassigned drives. If your in 98 or me, I don't know where you would find out without a third party app to tell you. NT has a utility called Disk Administrator ro somthing like that in Admin tools.

Good Luck

 

[Lone Wolf]

How did you create those partitions??

If you used FDISK to create those partitions, you can view the partitions under menu option #4 - i think (Under the FDISK main menu).

If you used a utility like Partition Magic you should be able to view all the partitions on that HDD.

 

[vilejames]

Im on windows 98 and I cant remember how I partitioned the hard drive. If you could give me some exact instructions I would be most grateful.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Huh??.... don't remember how you did that eh?... I bet you were in the one in your class to always say "My Dog ate my homework".

Well no matter. Boot up your pc w/ the Win98 boot diskette in the A: drive. At the DOS prompt type: the following w/out the quotes: "C:\FDISK"

Say yes to the first question that pops up. When you see the FDISK main menu, select the option that lets you view the partition setup. (I think it's option #4 or #5) One piece of warning, if you have not backup critical data on your hdd, i would suggest doing that now before you do this. If you have not used the fdisk utility - it's possible you may delete a partition by mistake and you will lose ALL data on that partition.

After you've viewed the partition setup, write it down on a piece of paper and reboot the system normally w/out the boot diskette. Come back and tell us what you see.

 

[vilejames]

No luck I'm afraid. The DOS programme couldnt find the partition- and it's still not their when I booted normally? Anymore ideas anyone? I'm getting a tad desperate.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Well given the fact that you cannot remember how you created those partitions, it's hard for me to help you further.

All i can say is that it sounds like you might have created NTFS partitions by mistake. That might explain why FDISK cannot see those partitions. Out of curiosity, how many hard drives do you have physically installed in your PC?

 

[HoLoCroN]

I don't think thats it Wolf, he mentioned tha he has Windows 98, that OS doesn't support NTFS.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Yep, i am aware of that. But I figured if he used a 3rd party utility he could have inadvertanly chosen an option to create NTFS partitions which is why he cannot view it under Win98/FDISK.

 

[HoLoCroN]

If that's the case.. then he's screwed....