after installing linux mandrake 8 onto my system, one of my windows partitions has been corrupted. although i made sure that the linux partition did not overwrite any of my existing partitions, one of my windows partitions is not listed in windows, described as "Hidden Win95/OS2 FAT32" in the installer and "Non-MSDOS" in FDISK. Is there anything out there that i can use to remount this partition and recover the data stored on it?

is this a windows partition that you would like to mount?

you can go ahead and reinstall linux and boot to windows from lilo or from linux > mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows

use it as root and you can manipulate files and such

the partition is recognised by windows, but does not contain the windows operating system. that, at least, is safe. i originally partitioned my hard disk with windows and programs on the first partition (C), and My Documents on the second (D). when I installed linux, i sandwiched a partition in between those and as a result have lost drive (D). i want to know how to remount drive D so i can get those files, THEN i'll install linux again

dude... d: is most likely gone... Im 90% sure of it...

you can try this to make sure:

boot to linux
when you get to a console at the prompt type
> dfFilesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda6 199085 41262 147543 22% /
/dev/hda2 7807 2480 4924 34% /boot
/dev/hda5 300603 7221 277861 3% /home
/dev/hda9 2019952 837612 1079728 44% /usr
/dev/hda8 50723 13154 34950 28% /var

if d: is there youll see hda2 as a vfat or fat32 file system but to be honest you probably erased it during installation.

good luck dude... i really hope its not lost!

>df
then:
Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda6 199085 41262 147543 22% /
/dev/hda2 7807 2480 4924 34% /boot
/dev/hda5 300603 7221 277861 3% /home
/dev/hda9 2019952 837612 1079728 44% /usr
/dev/hda8 50723 13154 34950 28% /var

to my recollection, linux detected the partition as a hidden Win95/OS2 FAT32 partition, but FDISK thinks this is a "NON-DOS" partition. either way, windows isn't picking up drive D, even now that i've taken the linux partition out (and left a big gaping hole)
any ideas?

ok...
as long as youre pretty sure its still there...
do a df from the command prompt

you MUST find out what the device name is for the lost partition...

lets say you do find it, lets say it is hda2 for example:

as root

>mkdir /mnt/windows

>mount -t fat32 (or vfat) /dev/hda2 /mnt/windows

as root you should be able to get into the /mnt/windows directory and voila, your missing data will be there... go ahead and copy it as best as you can

let me know if you need more help

My second HD has one winFAT32 partition which disk druid and
linux fdisk recognize, but DOS fdisk sees a non-dos partition
and there's no way to access this disk from Windows because it
doesn't have a letter(i.e. D:\) HELP!!!! Although I can mount and access the drive from Linux, I need my files in Windows. How do I fix the partition so Windows can recognise it again.

that i could not tell you because now i know more about linux than i ever did with windows because i almost never use it...

sorry dude...

tricky kid knows...he knows everything! :-)

It depends on how much data you have. You can copy the "D:" drive data to the windows drive using Linux, or copy it somewhere else (to back it up in case it all gets toasted!).

You can then use LINUX FDISK to change the partition type to FAT32. Windows should then see it. Be careful using the DOS FDISK, as this has limitations that the Linux one does not have and can mess everything up (I have done it...!)

Joe