Hard Disk not appearing in My Computer.

[Ranek]

Hey all, I wondered if you could help me with a problem.

I've had two Hard Disks installed in my computer. One was running Windows XP, and the other was running Windows 7 Beta. At this point everything was working fine, but I just recently installed Ubuntu on my second disk, and since then it no longer appears in My Computer. It has no Drive letter in Disk Management and appears as "Status: Healthy (Unknown Partition)". I can right click on the disk, but the only option I recieve is deleting the partition which I don't want to do.

There must be some way around this, when running Ubuntu I can access both my hard disks, but not on Windows, which I find a bit odd. I've googled this problem but haven't made much progress so wondered if anyone here could lend a hand.

I've included a print screen to show how my Disk Management looks.

http://i31.tinypic.com/2dawrid.jpg

Thanks

Chris

[Vic]

It has no Drive letter in Disk Management and appears as "Status: Healthy (Unknown Partition)". I can right click on the disk, but the only option I recieve is deleting the partition which I don't want to do.

Your problem is that Windows doesn't contain much in the way of filesystem drivers :-(

But there is good news - because the ext2/3 fs formats are Free, everyone knows how to drive them. So someone write a driver for Windows. It's called "ext2ifs" or something like that.

Vic.

[PMM]

Sounds like you have given a whole drive over to Linux

...If the intention is to access a Linux Partition for data then indeed ext2IFs (http://www.fs-driver.org/) per Vics post.

If you intend just to run differing OS's your best option is partition the 1st part of the drive as a Windows OS of limited size then create your Linux partitions & swap partitions in the remaining free space.

You also then have the option of accessing the Windows partition from Linux for a common file storage ground.

[coursemyhorse]

Hey all, I wondered if you could help me with a problem.

I've had two Hard Disks installed in my computer. One was running Windows XP, and the other was running Windows 7 Beta. At this point everything was working fine, but I just recently installed Ubuntu on my second disk, and since then it no longer appears in My Computer. It has no Drive letter in Disk Management and appears as "Status: Healthy (Unknown Partition)". I can right click on the disk, but the only option I recieve is deleting the partition which I don't want to do.

There must be some way around this, when running Ubuntu I can access both my hard disks, but not on Windows, which I find a bit odd. I've googled this problem but haven't made much progress so wondered if anyone here could lend a hand.

I've included a print screen to show how my Disk Management looks.

http://i31.tinypic.com/2dawrid.jpg

Thanks

Chris

It's been answered above already but just to try and put it more simply for you incase you don't understand. Windows addresses files and folders on a disk because they are formatted using the Windows File system type NTFS. (or potentially FAT/FAT32 for older file system types). Linux/Unix/Macs use different file systems that windows can't simply read without additional software/drivers to tell it how to do it.

[Ranek]

Ok thanks guys, I tested the drivers, and they appear to have worked. I can now see the 2 partitions in Disk management with drive letters, and the 2 partitions now appear in My Computer. But when trying to open one it says that it needs to be formatted.

So I went back onto the site and had a look at the troubleshooting, I ran a program they suggested to find out what to do next and recieved this info.


Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Chris\My Documents>mountdiag L:
The volume has not been mounted. No file system has been recognized.
You may look at the /etc/fstab file of your Linux installation to get more
information.

C:\Documents and Settings\Chris\My Documents>mountdiag K:
The volume has an Ext2/Ext3 file system, but the Ext2 IFS 1.11 software did not
mount it because the file system has an inode size unequal to 128 bytes (inode
size: 256 bytes).
The only way to solve it is to back up the volume's files and format the file
system: give the mkfs.ext3 utility the -I 128 switch. Finally, restore all
backed-up files.
After that, the Ext2 IFS software should be able to access the volume.


Not too sure where to go from here, can anyone put it into simpler English? haha

Cheers

[Ranek]

Hey again

Doing a bit of searching I came across this thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=979523

After a bit of reading I realised I had two options, I could either reinstall part of Ubuntu or try another tool.

http://www.ext2fsd.com/

Which is supposed to work with a 256k inode.

I uninstalled the Ext2 IFS and installed Ext2FSD and now its all working super. I'm able to both read and write onto the Ext3 file system. I've left the swap partition untouched but now I can use the other 112Gb while on Windows aswell.

Thanks for everyones help. Its a rookie and a bit moronic mistake from me, thinking Windows would be instantly compatible with the Linux file system, doh!