File allocation table bad

Try these steps, it may help you.
Run scandisk in windows, choice Thorough, click Automaically fix errors.  Then Click Advanced icon, in advanced options goto cross-linked files click delete, now goto lost files fragment, pick Free.  Click OK buttom for leave the screen, and now start the scandisk.  Depending the size of your drive, and number of your files, that may takes you one to three hours to scan the disk.  After you done the scandisk, then run defragment to defragment the drive.  This may takes half or one hour to finish.  After you finish these jobs.

PS.  Disable screen saver and all other applications, Including the MS Office task bar.  Before you run the scandisk in my way.
 
 

Scandisk cannot read drive

this is a drastic solution, in that you will probably not be able to recover data after following these steps.

1. restart the machine in dos mode.
2. run fdisk
3. change active partition to your second fixed drive.
4. delete the partition
5. rebuild a new partition

this should make you a new file allocation table, but be aware that all your old data will be destroyed. after this, do a full format and scandisk to make sure that you don't write data to any bad sectors as they will be marked.

bush

Hi Frenchjericho,

Perhaps we could start at the basics. Firstly, if you are using Norton Disk Doctor, then I assume you are running Norton Utilities which will run a drive image check automatically at each boot up, if configured as such. If you have a drive image file for your 'D' drive then run the appropriate application within Norton Disk Doctor to restore your Hard drive using The 'Drive Image' file. This will then restore your FAT. If this is not the case, then I need some more info.

Assuming your hard-drive was formatted under DOS then you will have a primary and a backup FAT starting at cyl 0, head 1, sector 2. You can actually read these using commands within the Debug environment, and you can restore the primary FAT from the Backup by downloading sector areas from the hard drive to memory, and re-writing them to the correct sector areas. Before I go through this procedure, I will need to know whether your 'D' drive is a logical drive in an extended partition on one main physical drive. ie one single drive with two partitions, or a seperate physical drive to your 'C' drive. Please let me know so that we can proceed. If we have to re-build your FAT by looking at individual file clusters and then associating together and building the FAT, then it's a long old game and the lost Data would have to be quite important to go to these lengths. Let us know anyway.

Cheers


Laphroaig.

Norton Disk Doctor should have helped but it looks like it didn't. There are actual 2 FAT's on each disk. You can try to use the backup one to replace the primary one with the following command:

FDISK D: /MBR

This rebuilds the Master Book Record using th "backup" copy. Though, I think Disk Doctor would have recommended this if it would help. Runninf FDISK D: /MBR shouldn't hurt anything on the drive (beyond what has already happened). This "trick" is sometimes good if you have a Boot Sector virus.

If this doesn't work I would suggest a full format. Sorry!

Laphroaig:
D drive is really a different disk drive that was formated under DOS.

Unfortunatly I was not using Norton Utilities prior to my problem so I don't have any disk image.

david_levine:
"FDISK D: /MBR" returns the following error message "Parameter format not correct - d:"

When i type "FDISK /?" to see all the possible options, here's what I get "FDISK [/STATUS] /X"

BTW: I'm running on win98

Adjusted points to 100

David Levine made the correct suggestion, but got the context wrong in the Dos command.

Context is everything my friends !!