Computer problem - inaccessible partition

glaeken

New member
Feb 28, 2004
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I hope someone can help me with this one.

I resized/moved a disk partition on Win2K using Partition Magic 7.0. The resize procedure was successful but at 99.9% completion on the move PM indicated there were errors. The drive is now inaccessible and I can not assign a drive letter to it via PM or the Windows Computer Management tool.

The Symantec knowledgebase tells me to run a CHKDSK but in order to do that I have to be able to assign it a drive letter to it. I use PM to scan for errors and it says there are too many errors and gives up.

Anyone have any ideas?
 
Punt. Game Over. Win2K =1, glaeken = 0.

Where is Sasha Jones when you need her, she is good at all this geeky stuff.
 
You might try the Win2k install CD. During the early stage of the install, it will ask you where to install and you specify the unaccessable space. It will ask you if you wish to format. I suggest formatting it and then aborting the install. It might work.
 
Partition magic screwed up my system too. You will have to back up your data, delete the partitions, format and re-install windows. There is no other way.
 
Dos Prompt


fdisk
 
Cinema Face said:
You might try the Win2k install CD. During the early stage of the install, it will ask you where to install and you specify the unaccessable space. It will ask you if you wish to format. I suggest formatting it and then aborting the install. It might work.

How do you figure windows will format a drive it cant even 'see'?
If there is no drive letter assigned to it, it cannot be formatted.

You might want to start backing up your data, its gonna be a long day :)
 
Why would you repartition a boot/os drive without using a tool such as Ghost?

Why would you repartition a data disk before backing it up (another drive or dvd)?
 
The drive I repartitioned is the drive with my backup (using DriveImage), not my boot drive. I had reinstalled Windows to clear up a DLL-hell problem and was repartitioning to create a temporary place to recover my data to while I was getting my Windows system back to where it was.

I have been using PartitionMagic for about 10 years and I have never had it corrupt a drive on me so there was no reason to create a second backup. At least until now.
 
Have you tried ...

disk software - that can search for and mount disks that have become invisible for various reasons?

Hard Disk Toolkit is the first place to start (at least that's what works on the Mac) - it has a specific disk mounter. Try Norton Disk Doctor next.

Try a search on my favorite engine: queryserver.com uising terms such as "mount invisible disk"
 
It's a shot in the dark, but try this. Go into the disk management page right click on the drive and select initialize/ or mark partition as active.

Hope this helps