NTFS vs. FAT 32 storage space question

[az]

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?t=41470

In retrospect, I maybe should've started a new thread and asked for help more directly, but I remember also having posted on Arstechnica (or at least having read the archives). I must say I was panicked, and I know I asked a lot in the MURC IRC. I've tried IBM DFT (dunno what it said anymore), OnTrack EasyRecovery (which I cancelled after two days, when it was finished with about 1% of the HD, which it couldn't show me before it wasn't finished with the whole HD), mounting the drives in Knoppix Linux (same futile access noise as when booting windows), some checkdisk/scandisk/whatever. Seems it was purely a FS problem, as the drive has been running flawlessly after formatting it for at least a year (it's now semi-retired due to its size and noise).

AZ

[Gurm]

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?t=41470

In retrospect, I maybe should've started a new thread and asked for help more directly, but I remember also having posted on Arstechnica (or at least having read the archives). I must say I was panicked, and I know I asked a lot in the MURC IRC. I've tried IBM DFT (dunno what it said anymore), OnTrack EasyRecovery (which I cancelled after two days, when it was finished with about 1% of the HD, which it couldn't show me before it wasn't finished with the whole HD), mounting the drives in Knoppix Linux (same futile access noise as when booting windows), some checkdisk/scandisk/whatever. Seems it was purely a FS problem, as the drive has been running flawlessly after formatting it for at least a year (it's now semi-retired due to its size and noise).

AZ

Actually no, there was probably some physical damage that was blocked off during the most recent scan. Or by EZ Recovery.

Every hard drive has had an error table, since time immemorial when it was "ok" to ship a hard drive with a certain percentage of bad sectors (they used to put a sticker on the side of Seagate drives listing the bad sectors on that particular drive!).

Programs like Norton (well, the OLD Norton, before it became a front-end for Chkdsk), Chkdsk/Scandisk, EZ Recovery, etc. all check the drive for errors. If they hit a sector that just can't be read, they add it to the error table. EZ Recovery, if it ran for 2 days, was undoubtedly finding error after error after error and trying its darnedest to get through them and get at your data.

What may have happened is that when you cancelled it, the entire area of the drive containing those bad sectors became "verboten". When you reformatted, it was blocked off and will never be used again.

The bad news? Areas like that get bigger with time. It may have been working "flawlessly" but if you had kept using it eventually it would have done the same thing all over again.

[az]

No, I ran a few checks after that, and no bad sectors etc. were found, and none were flagged (and it would be a huge coincidence if EasyRecovery had just finished flagging all bad sectors). And since that time, none have surfaced either, or is WinXP that intransparent, that it doesn't show such things?

AZ

[Gurm]

No, I ran a few checks after that, and no bad sectors etc. were found, and none were flagged (and it would be a huge coincidence if EasyRecovery had just finished flagging all bad sectors). And since that time, none have surfaced either, or is WinXP that intransparent, that it doesn't show such things?

AZ

Once they're flagged and marked, you'd need a low-level program such as Spinrite for DOS to see them again.

And I didn't say that EZ Recovery had just finished. I said that since it was interrupted the entire area of the disc may have been marked bad, instead of the individual sectors.

[Wombat]

No, I ran a few checks after that, and no bad sectors etc. were found, and none were flagged (and it would be a huge coincidence if EasyRecovery had just finished flagging all bad sectors). And since that time, none have surfaced either, or is WinXP that intransparent, that it doesn't show such things?

AZ

WinXP probably doesn't know. Hard drives will remap themselves these days, routing around drive failures, and only the HD itself would know. The only way you might know is maybe some SMART info would tell you.

[az]

Well yeah, that's the thing: The SMART status of the drive never changed. IBM's DFT didn't report anything, either.

AZ

[Wombat]

I didn't say the SMART status. I meant some SMART commands. All of the drives have tons of info that they don't tell you unless you send some very specific, usually vendor-unique, commands. Often, you can't ask those over IDE, either, only from the drive's serial port.

[az]

Ah OK.

AZ

[chaoliang]

I also recall that EasyRecovery once failed to resue some of my files that were just deleted. Those files were not important, though. I stopped to use that program after this experience.

[Marshmallowman]

I know my old scsi ibm's uses to show the count of original bad sectors...and the grown bad sectors separately. As I recall my seagates did it as well, that way when you see the grown bad sectors increase you panic and order a new drive before it dies completelty.

I guess smart should do the same for IDE drives....it did on my 40gb deathstars(in the nick of time)

But anyways..large files(esp >4GB) on a large drive for windows should = ntfs.

Having said that I have neen burnt by ntfs quite few times and only every use it for video capture drives anymore so I can use larger than 4G files...fat32 for the rest.

[KeiFront]

Az take a look at http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

[Gurm]

I also recall that EasyRecovery once failed to resue some of my files that were just deleted. Those files were not important, though. I stopped to use that program after this experience.

That was what turned me off of EZ Recovery. I hit "delete", went "oh crap", fired it up... and it said "no deleted files found". Undeleter, Restorer2000, and Encase of course all showed them clearly, and I got them back without trouble.