Windows 10: Is it possible to reset the filesystem on a partition/volume to NTFS without formatting?

I'm migrating the data on an old laptop to a new laptop. To accomplish this, I removed the disk from the old laptop and put it into a USB-SATA bridge. The first time, this worked fine, and I pretty much got all my files off the disk.


Then, I started installing apps on my new laptop, and one of the apps for a web service asked for my password, which I couldn't remember. I thought, okay, I can just eject the old laptop disk and put it back in my old laptop, boot it up, start the app, reset my password to something I remember.


So, I did an eject. I was told it was safe to remove the disk, so I did. Then, I put the old disk back in the old laptop and turned the old laptop on. I received a kind of pre-boot blue screen saying the NTFS was corrupted and would I like to repair. But, all the repairs it did could not bring the old disk back to booting in the old laptop.


Eventually, I started a command line in Recovery mode, launched diskpart and looked at the partitions and volumes on the old disk. And, my old laptop Windows drive now indicated an unknown filesystem.


I shut down the old laptop, and put the disk back in the SATA-USB bridge. Now, it turns out this partition is also Bitlocker encrypted, but I have the decryption key and it WORKS! If I enter the wrong key, like a digit transposed, it won't unlock the partition, but with the right number Bitlocker lets me open the disk. It just can't understand the filesystem on the volume anymore.


While the old disk was in the SATA-USB bridge, I took a look at it with Paragon Hard Disk Manager 15 and diskpart. I'm attaching those pictures here. It really looks like my disk is still intact, it's just "forgotten" that it is NTFS. Note that HDM reports an amount of free space that actually is pretty close to the free space I recall actually on the disk.


I don't know how the disk got into this state. Maybe there was a piece of fuzz when plugged old disk back into the old laptop. Is it possible something like safe boot, or - I don't know - Absolute Software Lojack has detected something fishy was going on because this old disk was moved out of old laptop?


So, my question boils down to whether there is a way through the command line, or the Powershell Command Line, to reset this disk/volume/partition to having NTFS as it's filesystem instead of unknown.



:)

 

How To Format A Write Protected Flash Memory ?

¿You already tried this one?...

Run CMD


1. diskpart
2. list disk

Then in the 3º step, put the correct number of disk in the list for the usb flash (if it's listed in disk 3, then you'll have to write select disk 3).

2. select disk #
3. clean
4. create partition primary
5. select partition 1
6. active
7. format fs=fat32
8. assign
9. exit

with that commands you will format the flash drive in fat32, if you have a large drive you can select also "format fs=ntfs" in step 7.

good luck!

 

Rebuild a ntfs partition table?

i need to rebuild a ntfs partition table without formating and losing the data. how do i do this? its saying drive needs to be formated
but doing a chkdsk /f but at the end it says aborted insufiecnt space to fix volume bitmap. Tis an external drive

 

How to convert RAW partition to NTFS partition.

Hi,

Welcome to Microsoft Community and thank you for your interest in Windows 10.

I understand the inconvenience that you are experiencing. I will definitely assist you.

Please try the below steps to convert the RAW partition to NTFS partition.

• 
  Press Windows key + X and click on
  Command Prompt (Admin).
  
• 
  At the command prompt, type convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs, where drive_letter is the letter of the drive you want to convert, and then press Enter. For example,
  convert E: /fs:ntfs would convert drive E to the NTFS format.
  
• 
  Type the name of the volume you want to convert, and then press Enter. You must use the existing name of the volume or the conversion will be canceled. You can view all available volumes in the
  Computer folder under Hard Disk Drives
  

Notes: After you convert a partition to NTFS, you cannot convert it back. If you want to use the FAT file system on the partition again, you will need to reformat the partition, which erases all data on it.

Although the chance of corruption or data loss during a conversion is minimal, you should back up all data on the partition before you begin.

Hope this helps. Post us with status we will be glad to help you.