Volumn on disk not accessible

On my second hdd I have 3 partitions, one of which I created to use
with TrueCrypt. This is mounted as Z:

It's worked fine for months, but suddenly I cannot access it, either
with TrueCrypt, or even with XPs disk management program to reformat
it (I suspect it will even prevent me from deleting it)! In both cases
I get an error message saying that the volume in use by some other
program, but I cannot find out what. I've excluded Z: from the real
time scanner in Avast, and also excluded it from my Genie Timeline
Backup monitoring (it was never in there anyway). The XP disc
management program reports the volume as healthy but full (presumably
because it's encrypted with TrueCrypt.

How can I find out what's using this volume?

I have a backup of the data that's in this volume, so don't mind
"taking a hammer to it" if necessary.

Thanks, David

DavidM wrote:
On my second hdd I have 3 partitions, one of which I created to use
with TrueCrypt. This is mounted as Z:

It's worked fine for months, but suddenly I cannot access it, either
with TrueCrypt, or even with XPs disk management program to reformat
it (I suspect it will even prevent me from deleting it)! In both cases
I get an error message saying that the volume in use by some other
program, but I cannot find out what. I've excluded Z: from the real
time scanner in Avast, and also excluded it from my Genie Timeline
Backup monitoring (it was never in there anyway). The XP disc
management program reports the volume as healthy but full (presumably
because it's encrypted with TrueCrypt.

How can I find out what's using this volume?

I have a backup of the data that's in this volume, so don't mind
"taking a hammer to it" if necessary.

Thanks, David

Try getting into it in safe mode ?

You could resort to using an M$-DOS floppy bootdisk - with the old "format"
and "fdisk" programs on it. Boot-up your PC with the floppy and when the
[ A: ] prompt appears, type:
"fdisk"
Then, change the selected physical drive to [2] and choose and select
the partition in question pressing [3] and try to delete it by choosing :
"Delete non-M$-DOS Partition" from there.

Download DOS & Windows Floppy Bootdisk image files [free] from :
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

Then create a bootable floppy from the image-file obtained
from bootdisc.com with the free [WinImage.exe] utility.
Download the WinImage installation [setup] file
by clicking on the link below :
http://www.winimage.com/download/winima85.exe

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




"DavidM" wrote in message
...
On my second hdd I have 3 partitions, one of which I created to use
with TrueCrypt. This is mounted as Z:

It's worked fine for months, but suddenly I cannot access it, either
with TrueCrypt, or even with XPs disk management program to reformat
it (I suspect it will even prevent me from deleting it)! In both cases
I get an error message saying that the volume in use by some other
program, but I cannot find out what. I've excluded Z: from the real
time scanner in Avast, and also excluded it from my Genie Timeline
Backup monitoring (it was never in there anyway). The XP disc
management program reports the volume as healthy but full (presumably
because it's encrypted with TrueCrypt.

How can I find out what's using this volume?

I have a backup of the data that's in this volume, so don't mind
"taking a hammer to it" if necessary.

Thanks, David

DavidM wrote:

How can I find out what's using this volume?

Any program using a file, volume or anything else tends to have one or more
"handles" to that resource. There's a SysInternals utility called "handle"
that displays handles, the resources they represent, and info on who own the
handles, available at:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/s...rnals/bb896655

If, say, you wanted to see which users/programmes had a handle for a file
named "C:\this\that\other.txt" you could use the command (in a command
window)

handle -a that\oth

(ie the argument after "-a" is just fragment of the value you're hoping to
see). For example I just opened a Windows Explorer view of a folder named
"C:\Documents and Settings\Laptop\My Documents\Downloads\Safety copies of
things not yet synced in Dropbox"

and in a command window issued:


C:\Documents and Settings\Laptophandle -a things

Handle v3.2
Copyright (C) 1997-2006 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

explorer.exe pid: 1856 1458: C:\Documents and Settings\Laptop\My
Documents\Downloads\Safety copies of things not
yet synced in Dropbox

C:\Documents and Settings\Laptop


that is, the only program with a handle to anything including "things" in
its name, is explorer.exe (running as process 1856) with a handle id of
1458.

I'd expect that

handle -a z:

would list any handle involving anything to do with drive z. Certainly
doing it here with

handle -a c:

produces a long long list of handles...


The handle utility also allows one to force the deletion of handles, which
can be useful because many programs seem not to release handles when they
are finished using a file/folder/volume/some other resource. Forcing a
handle supposedly being used by a particular program to be deleted can free
up the file/folder/whatever for use by other programs, and - provided you're
careful doing this - that can save you from having to reboot. Of course if
you force the system to free a handle that was actually in use, you can
expect something to crash.


--
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

Email sent to my from-address will be deleted. Instead, please reply
to replacing "aaa" by "284".