Fat 32 IDE rmoveable drives (from WIN98SE system) not accessable from XP system

[steve at Your Heaven]

I don't think there is a 32gb limit in xp - I have several external 80gb 1394 fat32 drives that work fine. Whatever the problem is, however, before you experiment with solutions, back up any work you have on them. Get them in some machine that will read them and backup to a 1394 or other suitable drive if you have to - if you have 100's of hours of work there, what you risk losing will make the effort and price of any backup seem small, if anything goes wrong.

The Microsoft website has a lot of info, may be handy and even have a quick answer. It is pretty big, and I don't know this stuff that well, but maybe another member here can point you to some links if you can't find the right one yourself.

[maxx]

You're right of course. I'll certainly do that.

On the 1394 side, did you have any issues getting those to mount and be seen on an XP system? That's been pretty inconsistent for me. Any tips, dos/don'ts I should know about?

thanks

[maxx]

I am migrating two removeable IDE drives from an old Win98SE system to a new XP-Home system. They are 60GB IBM Deskstars formatted from 98SE into single, Fat32 volumes with approx. 57GB of useable space on each. They are properly installed with master/slave IDE jumpers properly set.

When inserted in the new system the drives show up in the Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management control panel as...

(F:)
57.27 GB FAT 32
Healthy

and

(G:)
57.27 GB FAT 32
Healthy (Active)


However when I actually try to "open" or access data from either of these drives using Windows Explorer I see a single, cryptically named item named @@GP - appearing as an individual file for disk (F:) and as a folder on disk (G:).

None of the 50 GB's of audio files on (F:) or the 32 GB's of audio files on (G:) are accessable - only this strange file/folder.

Right-clicking on each drive from Windows Explorer and selecting "Properties" gives me the familiar "Pie" display with used and unused space accurately reflecting what i know to be on these drives.

Digging deeper (in Windows Explorer) I get...

Local Disk (G:) (right-click) > Properties > Hardware tab > Properties button > Volumes tab: I see that all volume information is blank (disk, type, status, partition style, etc.).

IS THIS BECAUSE WINDOWS XP ONLY WANTS TO SEE FAT 32 PARTITIONS OF 32GB OR LESS? Is that my problem here?

Would using a utility like Partition Magic to convert these drives to NTFS allow me to access or recover the data on these drives?

Any other thoughts or options?

I am a longtime Mac/PT user just now getting familiar with the intricacies of the various flavors of Windows so any help is much appreciated.

Thanks!

maxx
[email protected]

[Rammelt]

I had a similar situation but with two drives from different win2k PCs. And it had to do with 'Ownership'. Once I took 'Ownership' of the drive, I could access all data.
You should be able to do that via Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management, I believe.

Best Regards,
John

[Rammelt]

Hmmm...Re-reading your post makes me think it probably is something else. I wonder why your F: drive doesn't show an 'Active' partition...?

I'll think some more and get back to you if I come up with something.

Regards,
John

[maxx]

John,

I tried the ownership thing however it didn't work. After following Microsoft's instructions on how to "take owndership" of a drive (start in Safe Mode, log on s Administrator, right-click on item > Properties > Security tab > etc....) I found no Security tab available. I suspect it may be an NTFS-only thing (these drives are FAT32) or... my drives are totally corrupted.

It was a promising suggestion though. Thanks for the feedback.

I will try some other approaches tomorrow and post results.

[steve at Your Heaven]

Sorry I didn't answer sooner, but just returned from a trip. In general, my 1394's work fine. I have had occasional problems with drives not mounting without a reboot. I also had (still have?) one drive (same brand and model as 3 others) that is sometimes picky about booting, sometimes works only if I add it to a system only AFTER the system is booted - go figure. I have 4 of these 80gig single partition fat32 drives.

The safest routine seems to be (1) boot, (2) turn the 1394 external drive on and wait 15 secs, and (3) then plug the drive into the system. but mostly, they just work ok without this.

I vaguely remember that the security thing is in fact an NTFS feature.

DD recomended a certain chipset for the 1394 adaptor. These recommendations are sometimes best interpreted stricktly. If you have a card with a different chipset, you might try borrowing a recommended one to see if that settles it. I'm using an Adaptec 'DuoConnect', which includes USB 2 ports in addition to the 1394's.

[wolftone]

Digi has recommended SIIG PCI 1394 adapters and Cambridge 911 chipsets on firewire bridgeboards. (Firewire drives are really IDE drives with an IDE-to-1394 adapter board).

The issues with the bridgeboards seems to be related to bi-directional throughput, and audio trackcount.

I have had success with and Adaptec AUA-3121 DuoConnect PCI adapter which has (2) 1394 ports and 3 USB-2 ports, and a Maxtor Personal Storage 300DV (model Y01FWRA080) 80GB 7200 rpm 1394 HDD.

Unfortunately, I have not been using it directly with PT-HD because its running on an older Gigabyte GA-6VX7-1394 P3 MB with onboard firewire. I have not been able to get ANY 1394 devices to work with the Gigabyte/VIA chipset.

On the other hand, my Sony Vaio PCG-GRZ610 laptop seems to be fine with anything I plug into the 1394 (iLink) port.