view fat16 partition in XP or Vista?

Superficial · 29 Jul 2009 at 20:59

I have a 257MB hard drive from and old IBM machine which a colleague wants some data off. when i put it into XP and try to view it it wont initialise the drive - is this due to it having a FAT 16 partition do you think?

theheyes · 29 Jul 2009 at 21:32

XP supports FAT 16 so I don't think that is the problem. Is it showing up in explorer?

Superficial · 30 Jul 2009 at 00:56

no it initialises fine, just as any other hard drive, connected via usb caddy, would but it wont show anywhere excet in disk management whereupon it is displayed as uninitialised - attempting to do so does nothing and attempting to assigna drive letters doesnt work.

i have used east recovery software to get the data off but, as anyone that knows recovery software will tell you, the retrieved data is a bit messy.

ahh well it may well be that i have gotten as far as i can with it

Bane · 30 Jul 2009 at 07:49

Bah, ignore

PhillyDee · 30 Jul 2009 at 07:53

Try the UBCD. Has some nifty utils on there.

bledd · 30 Jul 2009 at 10:23

use testdisk

it's on the partegmagic cd, or can run it in windows