Cannot View NTFS Logical Drive After Using Fdisk

• Microsoft Windows 95
• Microsoft Windows 98
• Microsoft Windows NT Workstation version 4.0
• Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0
• Microsoft Windows NT Server Enterprise Edition version 4.0

SYMPTOMS

If you start Windows NT in a dual-boot environment with Windows 95, or Windows 98, use the Fdisk tool to delete a logical drive using the File Allocation Table (FAT) file system, and then restart Windows NT, you may no longer see logical drives that use the NT file system (NTFS) in Disk Administrator.

For example, this behavior could occur if you configure your computer to dual-boot between Windows NT and Windows 95 with a primary FAT file system partition as drive C. In Windows NT, you configure two logical drives: drive D using NTFS, and drive E using the FAT file system. When you run Fdisk, you can view only the logical drive using the FAT file system (which is labeled drive D by Fdisk but is drive E in Windows NT). When you attempt to delete drive D, you delete the NTFS drive instead.

CAUSE

Fdisk cannot recognize NTFS logical drives in an extended partition, and therefore deletes the NTFS logical drive if it occurs before the logical drive using the FAT file system.

RESOLUTION

Use Disk Administrator to make changes to logical drives when you have logical drives using both NTFS and the FAT file system. Fdisk is not supported for use in this configuration.

Note that if you run Fdisk a second time, you can successfully delete the logical drive using the FAT file system.

If a primary partition is set to NTFS, Fdisk recognizes the partition as a non-DOS partition in Windows 95, and recognizes the partition as NTFS in Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 (OSR2) and in Windows 98.

Keywords          : kbtool win95 win98 NTSrvWkst 
Version           : WINDOWS:95,98; WINNT:4.0
Platform          : WINDOWS winnt 
Issue type        : kbprb 

Last Reviewed: January 30, 1999