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    Problem recognizing some partitions of NTFS HDD

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by zambie, Aug 29, 2007.

  1. zambie

    zambie Notebook Consultant

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    I plugged in my ext hdd (usb 2.0) seegate freeagaent to my mbp... it has 4 partitions ... yet only 3 are showing up in the volumes list ... anything i can do to troubleshoot?
    the external hdd is formatted using ntfs... but even so ... atleast from a perspective of recognizing the partition there shouldnt be any problem...

    any thoughts/ suggestions? ...
     
    zambie, Aug 29, 2007
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  2. knp

    knp Notebook Evangelist

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    What format is the 4th partition and from which operating system are you viewing this HDD? If you're 4th partition is HFS+, it cannot be viewed in Windows.
     
    knp, Aug 29, 2007
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  3. zambie

    zambie Notebook Consultant

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    i'm trying to view it from os x ...
    my external hard drive has 4 partitions all of which are ntfs formatted...
     
    zambie, Aug 29, 2007
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  4. knp

    knp Notebook Evangelist

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    Was the last partition formatted correctly? Perhaps you can try reformatting that partition and see what happens.
     
    knp, Aug 29, 2007
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  5. zambie

    zambie Notebook Consultant

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    no problems with the formatting.. and there's no way i can reformat my external right now.. it has lots of data... am in the process of placing my data in my mac and emptying it ... and then am considering formatting it to hfs journaled...
     
    zambie, Aug 30, 2007
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  6. never2fast

    never2fast Notebook Geek

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    Plug the drive into a windows PC, go to administrator -> computer management -> go to disk management

    have a look if there is anything suspicious there, at least you can see if that particular partition is in anyways differ to the other 3.

    For example my mac drive shows up as

    [GPT Protective, simple, basic, healthy] [Primary] [Primary NTFS, system boot, oage file, active, crash dump, primary partition]
     
    never2fast, Aug 30, 2007
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  7. hollownail

    hollownail Individual 11

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    hrm, it may be a limitation of OS X being able to view extended partitions. Since I haven't dealt with partitions in a while, my head is a bit hazy in regards to this.
    But I assume you have three primary partitions (I believe the max for a HDD) and the 4th is an extended partition. It maybe a bug or something where non native NTFS OS (read any non windows systems) can only see the primary partitions, not extended ones.
    Just my guess... Not really sure though.
     
    hollownail, Aug 30, 2007
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  8. taelrak

    taelrak Lost

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    That's odd that it'd only be able to see 3 and not the last...

    I had a problem with my WD MyBook similar to this - the entire drive was formatted NTFS, but even though OSX should be able to read NTFS fine, it wasn't able to see the drive at all until I reformatted it. Ah well.
     
    taelrak, Aug 30, 2007
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