[Killer97]

Hey all,

My PC has 3 hard drives in it.

The fist Drive is SATA 160gig and i put a fresh, legit install of VISTA Home Premium 32bit on there.

The second drive is a 120 gig SATA drive (used for Data) that was just used to store music, downloads, etc.

The third drive that I added was an IDE drive that I installed a full, legit copy of Win XP Professional 32bit on it. When I installed XP, I unplugged both other SATA drives to avoid any issues.

Once again, Vista was installed first. Then the IDE Drive was added, and XP was installed to the IDE Drive.

After XP was installed, I plugged the other SATA drives back in.

I would simply hit ESCAPE at bootup to select the drive I wanted according to the OS that was on it. Everything seemed fine.

I figured that having Each OS on a physically seperate drive would eliminate any problems....hah, read on...

Now, I use the 120 gig Data drive from XP and VISTA to store music, downlaods, etc. Vista and XP both saw this drive just fine. Vista called it d:, whereas XP called if F:, I believe)


For several days, everything was fine. Vista worked fine, and could read and write to the data drive. Xp worked fine and could read and write from the same data drive.

Now, out of the blue, whenever I try and access the shared Data drive, XP and Vista BOTH say "Disk structure is corrupted and unreadable."

It was fine earlier int he day, then I fired up XP, and found that I couldn't see the data drive - same for vista.

I had just installed MS Office Enterprise prior to noticing that the data drive was acting up - not sure if that's related

I thought it may be a drive letter issue, but I can't even change the drive letter - i get the unreadable error I mentioned above.

I have been doing some reading, and it seems that XP and Vista will play nice at first, but they tend to alter each other boot record's drive assignments, etc.... So, I am hoping I can just undo something, and have this fixed.

WinXP and VISTA both still run fine, it's just that the Data drive cannot be accessed.

After I get this straightened out, I think I will delete my XP install, and stick with Vista as I don't want future issues.


Any thoughts? Thanks a TON in advance,

Matt!

[Elvandil]

How was the data drive partitioned and formatted originally?

[KillerQ]

Hello,

I used Vista to format the data drive - nothing fancy, just figured I would format it to make sure it was clean.

Now that you're asking, I am starting to second guess myself....yea, I am pretty sure sure it was Vista. What would be done differenty depending on which formatted it? (that way I can try both).

However, I know for a fact that I did not create any partitions on this data drive.

I look forward to your response.

[Elvandil]

It's possible that XP deleted the partition. Take a look here:

http://forums.techguy.org/windows-nt...highlight=NTFS

If you have data on that drive that you want to recover, try:

Testdisk
or
Testdisk Boot Floppy Image

[Killer97]

Ok, I fixed it....

NOTHING seemed to work through VISTA, I kept getting the unable to complete format error - so I unhooked the Vista boot drive, and hooked up the XP IDE drive. At first, I was still getting the corrupted drive error in XP.....then....

In XP, I deleted the volume, added a simple volume and made it active, then it was able to format without a hitch (i think this s the order i went through, but I am not sure, I was trying anything).

Now, it seems to work fine!

I read that when Vista sets a drive up for the first time, it may not play well with XP - but a drive setup by XP will work fine with Vista.

Now, my question.... Is it ok to have the sata boot drive with vista and the IDE boot drive with XP conected at the same time? Or will they onc again cause a problem with the data drive that they will both use?

I wonder if this problem was caused by Vista formatting the data drive in the first place, as opposed to XP.


I just want to play it safe....any suggestions about these drive playing nice?

Thanks again,

Matt!

[Elvandil]

You shouldn't have any problems if you partitioned the data drive with XP. Except, of course, Vista will delete all the XP restore points.

[bradacus]

Microsoft is brilliant...don't question Vista's prowess! This thread is blasphemous!

[Killer97]

Originally Posted by Elvandil

You shouldn't have any problems if you partitioned the data drive with XP. Except, of course, Vista will delete all the XP restore points.

PC:

Drive c: (sata) is Vista
Drive c: (IDE) is XP
Drive g: (sata) is the data drive that both use to download and access music, etc...

As a reminder, above is how my PC is set up. Will Vista STILL erase the restore points? When I partitioned the data drive with Vista, it was named G. To be safe, I also renamed the data drive to G in Vista (it was F by default) - not sure if that will help at all....

I do recall that the first reboot with vsta after the new drive was on, it did a chkdsk and delete a few random files for some reason - still works though...

Thanks,


matt!

[Elvandil]

I'm sorry. I stated it exactly backward above. It is XP that deletes Vista's Restore Points. Vista, knowing about XP's existence, does not hurt XP in any way. It is XP, which did not know that Vista would come into being, that deletes Vista's Restore Points.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926185

[Killer97]

Originally Posted by Elvandil

I'm sorry. I stated it exactly backward above. It is XP that deletes Vista's Restore Points. Vista, knowing about XP's existence, does not hurt XP in any way. It is XP, which did not know that Vista would come into being, that deletes Vista's Restore Points.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926185

Thanks again...

So, do you think it is safe for each independent boot drive to share one common 3rd drive for downloads, accessing music, etc?

I am not too concerned about the vista restore points being deleted - however, the work around options don't seem too bad...

Later,

Matt!

[Elvandil]

It's fine to save the drive if it was partitioned by XP, or Vista has been changed to make XP partitions, like I have done to all my Vista installations.

This file contains reg fixes to change Vista to make the XP partitions. The "undo" is included, too.

Change Vista To Make XP Partitions

This will change nothing on your current setup. Just in the future, when Vista creates a partition, it will be the XP type.