Cannot assign a letter to a FAT32 partition

Question

I have an external hard disk where I have created many partitions to use also in Linux.

First two partitions are FAT32. The third is a Truecrypt partition. I cannot assign a letter to the second partition.

When I go to Manage disk and right-click on the unassigned partition, most of the options are not enabled.

What have I to do to see this partition on my XP PC?

Answer 1

Windows only supports one active primary partition at a time, and by the looks of it you have three primary partitions and an extended partition containing 8 secondary partitions.

One of your primary partitions is active and allocated to drive letter I: so the other two primary partitions are inaccessible to windows.

Since Truecrypt is obviously happy with it's volume being a primary partition (which conveniently also hides it from Windows), I would be inclined (after backing up the whole drive several times) to remove the 2nd primary partition, move the truecrypt volume to be next to the active primary (I:) partition, expand the extended partition to fill the hole left by the truecrypt partition and re-create the 98GB FAT32 partition in the new space in the extrended partition. At this point you should be able to format it, allocate a drive letter and copy the data back into it.

Answer 2

Have you tried another disk manager? I use EASEUS Partition Master, home edition is free. You can change drive letter in the Advanced menu.