Need Urgent Help/Suggestion: 2 HDD with FAT32 & NTFS

[PrinceHeart]

Hello Friends,

Need an urgent help here.
Got 2 HDD 40GB each.
1st HDD - Drives C E F (all FAT32)
2nd HDD - Drives D G H ( all NTFS)

C Drive - WIN98SE
D Drive - WINXP PRO SP2

Finished formatting D G & H and installed winxp pro sp2 and installed all required drivers and softwares i use within the last 12 hours. Used winxp installation cd to make partition in new HDD to make D G & H and format them all in NTFS file system.

All works GREAT !!
Then - shut down PC and then choose win98 to start in startup promt(dual boot). Went inside win98se - just C E & F folders showing.

I know NTFS is superior than FAT32, but i didn't expect the 2nd HDD to just vanished when i login through win98se. When i login through winxp - its showing all 6 local drives(C D E F G H), but in win98 - its showing just the FAT32 partion local drives. Got all my files and movies and mp3s and softwares in that 2nd hdd, but its not showing. I tried DOS - saying D G H are invalid drives - this is out of my knowledge here guys.

BUT......Please tell me there is a way to use my 2nd hdd with win98se too ? I got my finger's crossed.
I don't want to move the whole 40GB and then format it with FAT32 - not again. I am tired already - working on my PC all day.

Please HELP !!!!!

thanks

[digen]

Afaik win98 doesnt support or read NTFS drives.

Perhaps this may help: http://www.runtime.org/captain.htm

[pimpom]

Win98 cannot read or even recognise an NTFS partition. The advantage of NTFS over FAT32 is debatable, but I don't want to go into that.

You can use Partition Magic to convert your NTFS partitions to FAT32. But this is a serious operation, and there is some risk of data loss. If you're going to do it, back up at least your most valuable data somewhere else first.

Also, after you've installed the OS and other software, it's a good idea to make a Ghost image backup of your OS partition(s). What you spent hours to install can be backed up and restored in a few minutes.

I use Norton Ghost 2003 to back up my C: drive. It's dual-boot with Win98SE and XP, and takes up about 3.5GB with all apps and utilities installed. It took me more than 2 hours to set up everything to my satisfaction, but just 10 minutes to make a Ghost image. If anything goes seriously wrong (such as when I get a spyware I cannot easily get rid of), I just format C: and restoring everything from the Ghost image takes about 7 minutes.

[PrinceHeart]

Hello "digen verma" & "pimpom".

1st of all thanks for your quick suggestions. I am downloading nemo32 program as told by "digen verma" - thanks. I will give it a try - no harm.

And 2ndly - I already backup my files and formatted the 3 rest NTFS partitions to FAT32. Just D Drive - which contains win xp pro is NTFS - i thought since NTFS works great with winxp - why not give it a try.

So for now - my problems are solved, I can access my files from win98se and winxp both.

And about "norton ghost" - i heard a lot about this since many years - the fact is - i was once ripped off by norton antivirus - since my pc got attacked by a exe virus 3 yrs ago - which corrupts all the exe files in my PC in every partition - like explorer.exe and notepad.exe - so i lost all my data then. So i don't trust in norton in antiviruses. Since then i am using McAfee antivirus and its keeping up my hopes and never fails my trust.
But about norton ghost, I would surely wants to give it a try since it takes about 30-50 min to install an OS, then installing the softwares i use - takes about 2-3 hours, then the upgrades to those programs and window's update takes another couple of hours. So altogether its a painfull experience for me - everytime i format my PC. I hope you guys can understand when i say the word "FORMAT" hahaha

Well. Thanks for your quick response. I will try to find norton ghost and see what's its like.

peace

[AlienTech]

lol thats a new one, trusting mcafee over norton. Maybe you do not know the story of how mcafee became a company to begin with...

If I was you I would go with something reliable like Avast or AVP or even FProt.

[pimpom]

I don't like Norton AV either and I never use or recommend it. It's only fairly good at detecting viruses, but tries to exercise too much control over what you want to do. I prefer PC-cillin and AVG.

Ghost is an entirely different matter. I use the cut-down OEM version that came bundled with a motherboard and it has served me well. It consists of only a single 629KB exe file and does everything I need except write directly to CD.

[enoonmai]

Originally Posted by AlienTech

trusting mcafee over norton..... If I was you I would go with something reliable like Avast or AVP or even FProt.

McAfee isn't reliable? This is the first time I am hearing that said. I've been using McAfee since VirusScan 5 after NAV started putting a load on my system that I couldn't bear. I don't know which version of McAfee AntiVirus you used, but McAfee VirusScan Professional 9 is just as good as NAV2005 when it comes to system protection. It's heuristics engine is just as good as the others and unlike NAV2005, its actually got improvements instead of a revamped codebase. I still dont get how you actually came to the conclusion that McAfee was unreliable. For all the years I've had both, McAfee had to be reinstalled 0 times while I lost track of how many times I've had to reinstall NAV. You should try Symantec's customer support and then try out McAfee's.
But as of late, I switched to Trend Micro PC-Cillin Internet Security Suite 2005. Its what both McAfee and NAV should have been in the first place.

[PrinceHeart]

Hello allz,

Being using McAfee Virusscan pro 7.0(original purchase from digital rivers from mcafee website) since many years. Got free upgrade to 7.03 and using it eversince. I even got free copy of mcafee vsp 8 from mcafee but when i installed it, it mucks up my pc, so went back to vsp 7.03 . But the 1 yr customer service is over and it don't give me anymore free upgrades, so i don't know about vsp 9.0.

I know how to use mcafee vsp and its being good to me eversince so im not willing to loose it and use some other virus scan on my pc though.

And regarding the original query in this post - I have format all the partitions back to FAT32 except d drive which is still ntfs running winxp pro_sp2 and i got a new query which is on


HELLPPP !! Norton Ghost VS WindowsXP Backup

So if anyone can help me out with my new post, kindly do.

peace.