Windows 10 thinks NTFS drive is FAT32

[charles black]

I have a secondary HDD with 2 partitions (E:/ and F:/). I use the E:/ drive to back up music files. Both partitions are NTFS formatted.

I have a physically identical drive that I use in another special purpose computer to play music files. This drive has only 1 partition and is FAT32 formatted as the music player likes to see this format.

On Saturday, I removed the NTFS drive and replaced it with the FAT32 drive. I synchronized files between my C;/ drive and the FAT32 drive, shut down, removed the FAT32 drive and reinstalled the original NTFS drive.

When I rebooted, I opened Explorer and found the names of my files on the NTFS E:/ drive to be nonsense with a mix of letters and characters. I am unable to open any files or folders on this drive. The F:/ partition on this drive has no issues. I ran Windows and Western Digital diagnostics and found no physical problems with the drive. What I did find, however, is Windows thinks this drive partition (E:/) is FAT32 instead of NTFS. It recognizes the logical partition F:/ as NTFS, however. It is as if Windows somehow thinks the FAT32 formatted E:/ drive is still in the computer.

Any ideas as to how I can get W10 to correctly see this partition as NTSF so I can retrieve my data?

 

[Tim Locke]

Assuming a SATA based machine, it probably would have been better to have used a spare SATA connector to plug in the FAT32 drive. And that might still work.

 

[charles black]

It is a SATA based machine. The original NTFS drive was SATA connected. I disconnected this drive and replaced it with the FAT32 drive using the same SATA connection. I then replaced the original, unchanged NTFS drive back into the machine using the original SATA connection.

 

[Tim Locke]

And if you now use a previously unused SATA for the NTFS drive? Does it come back alive. ( most PCs of my acquaintance have 4 or 6 SATA slots.)


I have seen a similar thing with W10 but it was when generating a new boot drive.

 

[Saltgrass]

What do you mean by synchronized the files? Did you copy those files to a new destination on the C: partition?

Could it be some software on your system causing the situation or do you believe it is Windows 10. If the system happened to be UEFI, the FAT32 partition may have confused Windows 10, but still not sure why changing drives back would show a problem.

You might wait to see if anyone has a better idea, but you might check the device manager and see if that drive letter shows up on the Hidden Devices View and uninstall it. You may want to do this with the secondary drive disconnected to make sure it doesn't effect the actual drive.

 

[charles black]

I tried a different SATA port and got the same result.

What I mean by synchronizing files is I changed 2 folders on my FAT32 E:/ drive to make them equal to those folders on my C:/ drive. Once sync'd, I removed the FAT32 drive and replaced it with the NTFS drive that wasn't changed in any way. This is what I don't understand. There should have been no changes made tot he NTFS drive but Windows now sees 1 logical partition in this unchanged drive as being FAT32. The files on that partition are not readable as a result.

 

[Saltgrass]

All I can think of is the device is being remembered from the earlier install. Changing something or doing my prior recommendations may help. We can go into the registry if necessary, there is a key which maintains info about different drives.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

Do you have an external drive caddy you could put the drive in or even change the SATA connection? I suppose there is a possibility when the old drive was reinstalled, Windows 10 assumed it was the other one and perhaps tried to fix it which messed it up but hopefully the drive is still intact.

 

[Gideon]

Never ever place a FAT32 Drive in an NFS machine. Evidently you messed up The Master File Table [MFT] , this can be fixed by running sfc /scannow / f / r From an Admin Cmd prompt or offline

 

[Trouble]

this can be fixed by running sfc /scannow / f / r From an Admin Cmd prompt or offline

I cannot find any reference where the /f (fix) or the /r (repair) switches are supported when running the native System File Checker utility (sfc).
Are you perhaps talking about the Check Disk utility (chkdsk)?

 

[Gideon]

I cannot find any reference where the /f (fix) or the /r (repair) switches are supported when running the native System File Checker utility (sfc).
Are you perhaps talking about the Check Disk utility (chkdsk)?

It's hell getting old.. Yes I meant chkdsk.