Hi, I've got a dual-boot set up, with Windows XP 32-bit and Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. I have a 2TB Samsung hard drive which is split up into three partitions - drives 'C' (XP 64.56gb), 'D' (7 Ultimate 65.3gb) and 'E' (data, music, games, etc 1.69TB), and I also have four other small hard drives: F, G, H, J, K (one of which, obviously, has been partitioned into two (ie, G and H). A few days ago I resized my 'E' partition using Acronis Disk Director Suite under Windows XP (my main O/S), making it 30gb larger by taking the space from 'D' drive (ie, reducing it from 95.3gb to 65.3gb). After re-booting though, to my shock and horror , XP promptly told me that my precious 'E' drive was "corrupted and unreadable"! However, when I went over to & Ultimate it recognised the drive as normal (NTFS, etc) and everything works fine; all the data, etc is there and totally functional. XP tells me that 'E' drive/partition is RAW - which obviously is untrue. When I ran good old Partition Table Doctor it said: "If PTD cannot find the correct partition for you, you may may try to access CMOS setup programme and change the LBA Mode setting". So as advised I went into the BIOS and changed the setting - from Auto to LBA, but it made no difference. So I'm a bit stuck now. Acronis Disk Director, for example, thinks the 'E' partition is fine - though I do note that the partition no longer has a drive letter ("none") and I am unable to change it back to 'E' as the drive letters on option only begin from L onwards. Any ideas as to how I get XP to recognise my 'E' partition again? UPDATE: when I run CHKDSK, etc it tells me that there is a "corrupt master file table" and hence has to abort operation. DANNY Thanks, DANNY
Backup the partition (onto another disk), delete it and recreate it using Disk Management in WinXP. Then restore the backup onto it. Microsoft make changes to NTFS which each version of Windows, and I suspect Acronis has "updated" your partition without telling you. You may wish to consider other software in future (though given the grief Acronis has caused someone else you might consider yourself lucky).
What do you reckon is the best software for repartitioning hard drives, etc? Thanks, DANNY (unfortunately, at the moment, I do not have 1.69TB of free hard drive space - internal or external - onto which I can back up all the data!)
Disk Management in Windows should do for simple stuff (adding and deleting). For more advanced work, I'd be inclined to check out GPartEd, from a boot CD like the Ultimate Boot CD. As for free disk space, are you actually using all 1.69TB? A good backup utility (Drive Snapshot is my choice, being very small, simple and fast with a one-month trial - but check out Macrium Free for a non-commercial option) will only need space for the actual data, and most will use compression to shrink things further (not much good for downloads, pictures or videos which are already compressed though).
UPDATE: when I run CHKDSK, etc it tells me that there is a "corrupt master file table" and hence has to abort operation. DANNY
XP's CHKDSK (assuming you were using that version) is likely not recognising the Win7 partition - which is far better than having it try to "fix" things and screw them up. Try the method suggested above (backup, delete, recreate, restore) rather than experimenting with tools that may mess things up.
No, CHKDSK is referring to the large 'E' partion which - currently - Windows XP thinks is "unreadable/RAW" but which Windows 7 (on the 'D' partition) finds perfectly 'readable' and 'non-RAW' (ie, NTFS). Thanks, DANNY
