Fat32 repair tool that beats chkdsk?

Discussion in 'Software' started by dsiebenh, Mar 14, 2008.

  1. dsiebenh

    dsiebenh Private E-2

    I have a Western Digital 1TB USB Mybook drive. Formatted from the factory as fat32. When the PC boots, XP always flags it for chkdsk, chkdsk runs but does not find/fix the problem.

    The drive runs fine. WD Utility detailed scan shows 100% healthy, as does HD Health. (12 hour scans) But when I went to run an XP conversion to NTFS, it ran a while then said the drive had errors and could not be converted.

    I disabled the chkdsk boot time scan in the registry but that is not a good solution.

    Obviously there must be some problem. What utility do you recommend to fix the problem? I'm thinking this is a fat32 integrity problem, not a physical problem with the disk.

    Thanks!
     
  2. dlb

    dlb MajorGeek

    That's strange :confused I thought that there was a drive size limitation with FAT32 that would not allow you to use such a large drive using the FAT system. I guess I was wrong. Here's some tools that may help:
    http://www.majorgeeks.com/Disk_Heal_d5751.html
    http://www.majorgeeks.com/DiskCheckup_d3464.html
    http://www.majorgeeks.com/FatMon_d262.html
    There may be others in the Drive Utilites section here at Major Geeks http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads8.html
    You could always back up the data on the drive, and re-format it as NTFS....
    Good luck ;) I'm off to work :(
     
  3. dsiebenh

    dsiebenh Private E-2

  4. dsiebenh

    dsiebenh Private E-2

    Bump... any more suggestions? I'd really rather avoid a lengthy backup and restore. Thanks!
     
  5. baklogic

    baklogic The Tinkerer

    Surprisingly, It seems that many external drives are shipped with fat 32, possibly to allow all operating systems to read them.
    You can convert to nfts, if you wish, and, unless you are very unlucky, keep all your data - I would still back up anything really important.
    It is always best, I find, if you stop your antivirus/firewall, and any other programs running before converting - I find the antivirus has interferred when I do other similar tasks, as it has deep roots.
    Click Start, then choose Run. enter "cmd", without the commas,
    to bring up a command-line window.
    At the prompt --C:\WINDOWS” with a blinking cursor.
    Enter the following: convert X: /fs:ntfs - (SUBSTITUTE X FOR THE DRIVE LETTER OF YOUR USB HARD DRIVE) note the space between the colon and the forward slash.
    Press Enter, you should see a message saying the conversion will take place next time you start Windows.
    Click Start, Shut Down, and Restart.
    Windows will then convert your drive--and it will possibly reboot your computer twice, in doing so..
    Once you convert a drive or partition to NTFS, you cannot convert it back to FAT or FAT32.without reformating the drive which will erase all data, including programs and personal files, on the drive.
    Also once the files are in NTFS then older windows will no longer be able to read them.
     
    Last edited: Mar 16, 2008

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