Wierd HDD Volume on my OS

O

orgasmatron

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 14, 2002
Messages
89
Hi forumers here...

Recently i created a Dual-Boot (Win98SE &WinXP). I have 2 HDD, 80gb(7200rpm) & 20gb(5400rpm). The 20gb is for storing MP3s and video files.. Ok so when i fresh installed win98SE, it detected a non-fat32 partition(which is referring to my 20gb storage hdd). From then onwards, it always prompted me to format 'D' drive(i think thats the NTFS volume) but always gets error.. I decided to load NTFS drivers so that everytime when i boot into win98, the wierd drive will be normal again..accessible.. i thought everything was smooth.....until,

I installed Win XP SP2(slipstreamed fresh install), then there's this wierd Local Disk volume called Drive 'G'. I clicked on it, it says " The Drive G:\ is not accessible, the parameters are incorrect". I went to properties, and it says Format is RAW, 0 used space, 0 free space, cannot do anything with it, not even format..

I really wonder why there's this extra Wierd local disk volume appearing on Windows XP.. i only have 2 physical HDD, and 3 partitions..but this 4th one, made me bewildered :)

I hope people here can help me out ?
 
Goto Start \ Control Panel \ System \ Hardware \ Device Manger \ Storage Volumes and see if there is a listing htere. If there is then highlite it and right click on Properties. I'm having the same issue and it shows a USB Storage Device such as my Smartcard Readers. I hope this helps. BTW. I'm using WinXP Professional. But I don't think it makes much of a difference.
 
Did my E-Mail messgae provide any results as far as your Phantom Drives are concerened?
 
abledon said:
Did my E-Mail messgae provide any results as far as your Phantom Drives are concerened?
Click to expand...

haha..Nice one my friend.."Phantom Drive"! hehe....But anyway...i tried ur method too,but it never showed the phantom drive...Its only appearing on My Computer & Windows Explorer..I even installed Windows 2000, format, reinstall..fresh install..everything..but still the darn Phantom of the Osama drive lingers around.. Was getting very frustrated until i decided to visit Seagate's website(my drive frm Seagate). Ran their resident Disk Management programe from DOS and found out... the Truth! very interesting i must say..

On the 20gb HDD, there's an extra phantom partition with zero bytes under FAT12...yeah..FAT12!!! How on earth can a 12-bit FAT(usually on floppy diskette) find its way into my HDD...

I am now doing a LOW LEVEL(FULL ZEROs Wriiting) formatting using seagate's software... will post the results......... Most likely FAT12 is the phantom
 
Early FAT Systems

The first MS-DOS FAT was based upon an 8-bit system used to manage BASIC files (there was not yet an operating system for use on PC’s). This FAT was a 12-bit version first used for managing floppy disks and logical drives with a capacity of less than 16MB. MS-DOS 3.0 introduced the FAT-16 system for larger drives, and this is the file system currently in use by most Wintel-based personal computers.
 
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