Re: Reading a FAT formatted disk in a Win XP, NTFS formatted system

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

From: Rick \ (rick_at_mvps.org)
Date: 03/20/04 

Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2004 15:55:38 -0500

Answered privately, repeated here:

Actually, a lot of folks are having similar problems. It's because Win98 is
fairly fault tolerant and can handle misaligned floppy drive heads or dirty
"bits". WinXP can't, it's very particular about the hardware. The only real
solution is to recover them on another Win98 installation.

Floppies use FAT12, regardless of whether the system was using NTFS or
FAT32, both Win98 and WinXP (as well as any other version of Windows) can
read/write in FAT12 with equal ease. The file system in use is not the
issue. The message you saw regarding NTFS at installation is to warn users
that are dual booting a Win98 system that the NTFS partition will not be
visible from that installation (Win98 cannot read NTFS on a local drive,
over a network is fine). 

-- 
Best of Luck,
Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science!  That's my other hobby!
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
Win98 Help - www.rickrogers.org
"Mike" <mkahmann@adelphia.net> wrote in message 
news:RYWdnQaBPqWFHcHdRVn-uw@adelphia.com...
> Rick,
>
> Used a HD (1.44) floppy.  In Win 98 just dragged the directory and all its
> files over form the c: drive to the a: drive.  Files were there as I
> confirmed it.  Was able to read them off the floppy.   Then did the 
> install
> of WIn XP, formatted the drive with NTFS.  Now want to copy the files back
> over to a documents directory.  When I put the disk in the a: dirve it 
> says
> "disk is not formatted, do you want to format it?"  Found a machine that 
> has
> win 98 on it and am going to see if it can read the disk.  This is not the
> first time this has happened.  So I was figuring it was that the NTFS file
> system cannot read the FAT file system.  I remember something in the 
> install
> of win XP, when formatting in NTFS it states you will not be able to read
> other file systems or maybe it was the other file systems cannot read the
> NTFS.  I am not sure.  All I know is I cannot read the floppy disk and I
> need to get the data off it.
>
> Is that as clear as mud or what.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mike

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