NTFS drive thinks it is FAT

I had a perfectly working PC with XP Pro installed on a 160Gb Maxtor HDD.

For no reason I error checked the hard drive, which the system did after
rebooting, at the end of the test the system rebooted and announced that
there was a error on the boot and boot.ini.

Useing XP Emergency (on disk) I tried fixmbr which did nothing then I tried
Fixboot. XP found the drive identified it as FAT and said that it was
successfully fixed.

The drive was FAT and is now unusable. Partition Magic sees it as a FAT
drive as does XP when I switched the HDD into another machine.

I have a couple of file recovery programs which see this drive as FAT and
will not show up any files. I tried a demo of Partition Table Doctor 3.0
which sees it as NTFS drive and claims it can rebuild the table to make this
work again, but being a demo will not do it until I pay $49

I have checked various reviews and the only positive ones seem to have been
left by the same person (The broken english is the same on them all.) So I am
very dubious to hand over the cash.

I need the files on this HDD desperately, theres alot of crucial stuff there
since my last backup which I do do (but not as often as I should have!)

I have booted using a Live Linux CD (Knoppix) and that shows as a FAT there
too and I do not have any expertise with QPART or Linux either really.

My question to you lovely people is.... Anyone used PTD 3.0 and can honestly
recommend it for this problem, or if anyone has any other suggestions to that
this drive can be called NTFS rather than FAT without a format?

The drive was not converted to FAT just the partition table adjusted as far
as I can see. I need something that does the same as fixboot but the opposite
to switch it back to NTFS, hopefully with file system intact.

Those of you familiar with partionmagic might want to know that textually it
claims I have only used 6.8Mb of the drive but graphically the bar goes to
the percentage of the drive that I had actually used. (It reports the total
size correctly, but as the others thinks its FAT rather than NTFS)

I can access the drive when piggybacked on another ststem using XP but its
all gobble-de-gook

Thanks for reading........ over to you......
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Windows partitions
    ... >> I need to know how to read windows partitions (FAT32, NTFS) on linux. ... you do this for FAT: ... You replace NNN with the device node where the FAT partition resides; ...
    (comp.os.linux.hardware)
  • Re: NTFS drive thinks it is FAT
    ... create a bootable floppy. ... If the partition boot record or the contents of the partition are damaged, and they may very well be with the amount of chkdsks you've been throwing at it, this should recover the partition and the data. ... The drive was FAT and is now unusable. ... this drive can be called NTFS rather than FAT without a format? ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.file_system)
  • AW: whats the story with the FAT32, 32GB limit ?
    ... FAT32 (FAT is the FileAllocationTable, something like pointers, showing ... FAT was developed by MicroShit (also NTFS) ... Bill once said (in DOS days), that noone will ever need a bigger RAM ... And when you download a file from a NTFS server to a FAT partition? ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: AW: whats the story with the FAT32, 32GB limit ?
    ... FAT32 (FAT is the FileAllocationTable, something like pointers, showing ... FAT was developed by MicroShit (also NTFS) ... Bill once said (in DOS days), that noone will ever need a bigger RAM ... And when you download a file from a NTFS server to a FAT partition? ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: to FAT or not to FAT?
    ... >> if you're gonna run dos games through windows, fat is not necessary ... >> pick whatever filesystem you want, just be mindful of the partition ... The additional benefits of NTFS are mostly ... I always set up at least two partitions - one for system files/programs, ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.file_system)
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