Hello.
My crazy cat ran and sat on my laptop then somehow when I realized it, my external HDD turned to FAT.
So I am trying to use Minitool Partition Wizard to convert it to NTFS. However, after i clicked Start the program ask for volume label. I ran the command prompt and I got the volume label for the drive. I click on minitool but it does not do anything. It just there. I cannot click on it. So what should I do?
Welcome to the forum it's simpler to just open for prompt type convert d: /fs: ntfs
^ I would really hesitate to do that without knowing whether the file system has really changed from NTFS to FAT32.
I tried that. The conversion failed because some bad sector of my HDD, I guess.
I checked my other HDD. It is NTFS, so with my little knowledge, that is where I got confidence, silly me.
So I tried fixing the error on my HDD using the same tool. I can finally access it now without converting it to NTFS but lost quite a number of files. Can't seem to find a free reliable recovery software yet.
Thank you so much for replying to me. Merry Christmas
Tell us how you fixed the error - what exactly you did
I use Minitool Partition Wizard. I used Check File System then clicked on the Check and Fix Detected Error. It deleted quite a number of files that perhaps cause the error. After that I can finally access my HDD. So with my lack of knowledge in this, I am not sure what caused the error. I thought my cat did something that turned the HDD to FAT because I googled that HDD supposed to be NTFS or something because of the big files, which is why I tried to convert it to NTFS in the first place but failed to do so.
Perhaps it is best if you can share if you have any idea why. And if you know any free data recovery software that I can try?
This will not help you now, but in the future it will. You should always have an image of your HDD on hand so that you can just restore the image and you will be running again in 15 minutes. When this problem is corrected, go to Macrium Reflect Free It is a free download. You would want a different HDD to store you image on. You will not be sorry.
He`s talking about his external drive, not windows.
I find it impossible that a cat sitting on a keyboard could turn an external drive from NTFS to Fat, there are too many steps that have to be done.
Partition Wizard IS partition recovery software.
1. First of all I didn't believe the cat and bull story and that is why I wanted to stop you from converting it to NTFS as per samurai's advice. But you went ahead and tried. And further on with check disk - for what I/we don't know. You never mentioned any problem accessing the external HDD after your " cat changed it from NTFS to FAT32". Did you?
2. Check disk does not delete any valid files. "All that CHKDSK does is make sure that the directory or the listing of files on the disk refers to the correct files. In other words, CHKDSK verifies that all of the pieces are there, the data is structured properly, and that everything that Windows needs to maintain that file system is in its proper order."
"File system errors can come from any number of different places. The more common reasons for this are not shutting down Windows properly, experiencing a crash, or having the power removed while the system is running. It’s also possible that the hard disk could be in the process of failing."
"CHKDSK only tries to repair damage that has already been done. CHKDSK will force the file system to be in a correct and coherent state, and that may result in errors becoming visible in different ways, but this is only as a result of whatever damage had already occurred."
In view of what is stated above there is absolutely no point in recovering the damaged/lost data, IMO
Even if, you would have had better chances had your HDD been NTFS for people say Getdataback - a commercial software - can put together the orphoned clusters/fragments and recover some of the files . But that IMO is a hit and miss.
So all I would recommend now is that - if you have really lost some files - backup all the data in that external drive and then check its health with the manufacturer's Diagnostic/repair utility.
And as bigmck said always have a one to one backup of all your important data that you may not want to lose. ( apart from the system image.) Do not spill and then cry. :)
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