I have a 500GB disk I use as storage in my windows 7 desktop and I want to use it as a boot disk in a server2003 machine for mucking about with AD. I formatted it when I got it as one 50GB boot part and one 450GB storage in the 2k3 pc, then stuck it in the win7 machine to use as storage temporarily. Now Ive plugged it back into the 2k3 machine and it boots up fine but the storage part is shown as RAW filesystem. I really hope its not since it has all my media on it The only thing I can think might have changed is that it wouldnt boot with the SATA controller set to AHCI when I put the drive back in so I switched it to IDE. Im fairly sure I had it this way when I installed though so I dotn see why it matters, it only switched itself back to AHCI because I have no CMOS battery in the 2k3 comp. So anyone got any bright ideas please? Any help welcome here, Thanks.

Hello George, Thank you for posting here. From your description, it seems that issue is the 500GB disk shows as RAW file system disk on the Windows Server 2003 machine after you plug it from Windows 7 machine. 1. What is the type of the 500GB disk before you plug it onto Windows 7 machine? MBR or GPT disk? Dynamic disk or Basic disk? 2. Did you remember that if you perform any operation to the disk when it was on Windows 7? 3. To check if the media data on the 500GB disk is not lost, please plug it back to the Windows 7 machine and then check if the data media can be access in that 450GB storage partition. If it can be accessible, please take screenshot on it when it is open with Disk Management console. 4. Meanwhile, for the safety consideration of the data on the disk, I would like to suggest that you copy the media to another backup disk. Afterwards, please switch back to the original BIOS settings on that problematic Windows server 2003 machine, then test to check if you can see the data partition when you plug it back on. If not, please take screenshot of it and send both of the screenshots to us via tfwst@microsoft.com I appreciate your time and efforts.This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

I faced a similar problem recently when My windows XP couldn't read NTFS partition but Windows 7 could read it. Please check the file ntfs.sys exists in you Windows2003 installation driveat following path:\Windows\System32\driversYou can refer the following link for more information:http://securenw.blogspot.com/2009/08/ntfs-partition-showing-raw-inaccessible.html

Hi, thanks for the replies. I should have reported back what I did earlier but heres what happened. I tried the drive back in the window 7 PC and it worked fine so I was sure the filesystem was intact. After that I took a long shot and reinstalled windows 2003 on the smaller partition and after that I could read both partitions on both PCs. Unfortunately this means I still have no idea why the problem came up in the first place!

Hi George, Thanks for your update. Based on the experience, some third party application or some virus could cause issue on file system level, therefore this could result in that issue on the previous problematic operation system. Since the issue no more exists after you reinstall Windows Server 2003, I suggest that we can keep monitor it, if the issue re-occur, please feel free to let me know.This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.