My FAT is corrupted

[bunnymud]

My seagate barracuda 4Gig UW SCSI drrive has corrupted sectors all over it and I was wondering if there is a way to fix it. I believe it can be fixed because it is only 1 3/4 yrs old and I thought I remember someone saying that I have to go back to 16 instead of FAT32. Thx in advance if you can help.

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"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
[Bill Gates, 1981]

[Rags]

When FAT is corrupted in my home, I tell my mother-in-law to either go on a diet, or leave

[bunnymud]

DOH...I setpped into that one

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"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
[Bill Gates, 1981]

[Marshmallowman]

are thos bad sectors as returned by scsi utils, or are they reported by scandisk?.

corrupted usually means something like a power failure or a particular bad crash did a dance on your data.
Just try running scandisk and setting it to do a full test (read and write test of all areas) , and fix those errors as it goes.

But if you have had sumething like a head crash, you may have a grown bad sector (as reported by scsi utils). Scan disk should be able to mark these sectors as bad, and should be able to continue using the drive.

The above procedures could possibly result in lost data, so if you can, suck of all your important files first.

And if you are really keen you could try a low level scsi format(which probably won't help). To see if you can reclaim the bad sectors or at least make sure they are marked as bad)

PS if all the bad sectors are in one spot, then you probably had a head crash. If you definetly have a lot of grwon bad sectors all over your drive, send it back under warantee!!!

PS overclocking can cause corruption to occur

[merchant2112]

there is an undocumented format command (win98)

format x:\ /s /z:32

YOU CAN USE FAT 32 WITH 16BIT BLOCK SIZE. uesing this command (/z:32)or other block sizes for that matter i think 64 =32 8 =4 ect.. half of what number value entered is file block size. i use this comand when i format my drives (and any that my buddys bring to fix ect.. and it improves system preformance and helps stop errors.)

some or all of what ive said above may be incorect but the command works try it.

[Jorden]

Merchant2112, is that the way people can have WinNT run from off a FAT32?

[Jorden]

btw, if the FAT's corrupted, try the old DOS command (NOT FROM A WINDOWS DOS BOX !!!!) fdisk /mbr

Do this on the DOS prompt (not the DOS safe mode!!) through the Windows start menu (press F8 after POST).

Jorden.

[bunnymud]

Thx for the suggestions. I reall hope it works, it is practally new.

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"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
[Bill Gates, 1981]

[HollyBerri]

Will either of those format commands help me if the size of my drive is being misreported (i.e., I guess the MBR is wrong)?

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Holly

[Alegria]

Windows NT can neither be booted from nor installed on a FAT32 partition because there is no native file system support implemented for FAT32. If you want to access FAT32 partitions from within NT there is a file system driver for read-only, read/write access on sysinternals/winternals.com
The read/write driver is not share or freeware.
It does not work upon boot!!! time but later on as a kernel mode driver running as a service.
Formatting FAT32-partitions with another block size does not correct issues like reportedly wrong size information.
Wrong size information often occurs when the translation mode for a drive has been changed (e.g. motherboard has been changed and uses a different translation scheme than the board before) The other possibility is that the drive has been formatted with WIN95B without updated INT13h extensions and later on WIN98 which includes extended INT13h functions has been installed without repartitioning/reformatting. INT13h is a software interrupt the OS uses to access the disk.
Regards, Alegria

[Alegria]

Forgot to say:

FDISK /MBR does not correct corrupted File allocation tables. The master boot record is separate from the FAT.

Regards, Alegria

[Buuri]

What's the gain using the /z:32 when formatting, other than the pleasure given by the use of undocumented feature? (the real gain)

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B

[merchant2112]

wow never thought i would see this much of a responce.

jorden don't know never tryed to run nt4 after useing that commnad. (ah the fact of the matter is i tryed nt4 two boxes ago and it stayed on that system for about 1 day (includeing install time) there was no support for most of my controlers throttle, ect.. so i killed it off.

holly i don't think so, but drive preformance dose improve (dam disk certinly defrags a heck of alot faster than not useing the 16bit block sizes.) ive timed it. (years ago) this is a command i found 3 hard drives back.

burri, the gain (real gain) fat 16 stablity and speed, and fat 32 drive space and file system. i found this comand about 3 years ago when looking for information on optamizeing an old champion udma33 3.1 gig hard drive. help full information found included setting up a perminate swap file moveing it to either a the oputter tracks of the drive or b moveing it to the fastest hard drive and puting it on that drives outter tracks. debates over what file system were read extensively. fat16 over fat32 udma over non udma ect... basicly you get the best of fat32 and fat 16 speed stablity large harddrive partitions ect... infor mation was found indetail at the forums on storeagereview.com hey those guys are into drive preformance like a crackaddit wants his daliy fix. (or eversmack if your a gammer)

[This message has been edited by merchant2112 (edited 22 December 1999).]

[Buuri]

I guess you mean www.storagereview.com ..

Anyway, thanks.

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B

[HollyBerri]

The other possibility is that the drive has been formatted with WIN95B without updated INT13h extensions and later on WIN98 which includes extended INT13h functions has been installed without repartitioning/reformatting.

Yep, that sounds about right.... and I did change mobos as well, some time previously to that...

Is there anything I can do? Or shall I just resign myself to getting a new HDD? Even reinstalling the drive overlay program doesn't help... and now Partition Magic is finding some (probably related) error, so it can't even operate on my partitions anymore...

Thanks for the info, Alegria!!

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Holly