Problems with big vfat

Problems with big vfat

[Karsten Becker]

Hi,
I've got a very big (367GB) Fat32-FS. I need this partition for data 
exchange between windows and linux.
When I have mounted the FS for a longer time and do some changes on this 
I got lost filesegments in scandisk. The partition is on a 6*100GB Raid5 
(3ware 7810). Has anyone an idea what the problem might be?
Is there any better way to exchange Data with windows?  (reiserfs,ext3 
rw-driver for windows?)
Cheers,
Karsten

Re: Problems with big vfat

[Mike Fedyk]

On Mon, Jun 03, 2002 at 06:38:39PM +0200, Karsten Becker wrote:
> Hi,
> I've got a very big (367GB) Fat32-FS. I need this partition for data 
> exchange between windows and linux.
> When I have mounted the FS for a longer time and do some changes on this 
> I got lost filesegments in scandisk. The partition is on a 6*100GB Raid5 
> (3ware 7810). Has anyone an idea what the problem might be?
> Is there any better way to exchange Data with windows?  (reiserfs,ext3 
> rw-driver for windows?)

There is ext2 for windows, but I haven't had a chance to use it.

Can you verify that you can use the same filesystem from windows reliably?

Re: Problems with big vfat

[Karsten Becker]

>
>
>There is ext2 for windows, but I haven't had a chance to use it.
>
>Can you verify that you can use the same filesystem from windows reliably?
>
>  
>
Yes, under windows it's working normally. I know about the ext2-driver, 
but would you really like to see ext2 fsck'en a 376GB-fs?

Re: Problems with big vfat

[Andreas Dilger]

On Jun 04, 2002  10:41 +0200, Karsten Becker wrote:
> Yes, under windows it's working normally. I know about the ext2-driver, 
> but would you really like to see ext2 fsck'en a 376GB-fs?

What, and "scandisk" on a 376GB FAT filesystem is better? ;-)  At least
under Linux you can use ext3, and you can still probably mount it as
ext2 under Windows.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2resize/

Re: Problems with big vfat

[Mike Fedyk]

On Mon, Jun 03, 2002 at 06:38:39PM +0200, Karsten Becker wrote:
> Hi,
> I've got a very big (367GB) Fat32-FS. I need this partition for data 
> exchange between windows and linux.
> When I have mounted the FS for a longer time and do some changes on this 
> I got lost filesegments in scandisk. The partition is on a 6*100GB Raid5 
> (3ware 7810). Has anyone an idea what the problem might be?
> Is there any better way to exchange Data with windows?  (reiserfs,ext3 
> rw-driver for windows?)
> Cheers,
> Karsten

Can you do some tests with non-important data?

If so, try to stress the vfat filesystem and scandisk in dos.  If scandisk
finds errors, don't fix them.  Reboot back into linux and run fsck on it
there.

Now report the errors that fsck finds, if any (read the documentation first,
there are some tips).  Maybe they can get enough information on the type of
corruption there is to update vfatfs, and fsck.vfat. 

Gordon, Roman (vfat & fsck.vfat maintainer respectively), do you have anything to
say about this? 

Thanks,

Mike

Re: Problems with big vfat

[Karsten Becker]

>
>
>Can you do some tests with non-important data?
>
As its a very big partition and it's half-full, I don't wan't to risk a 
data loss. Just when there is definitly no other way I would do so.

>If so, try to stress the vfat filesystem and scandisk in dos.  If scandisk
>finds errors, don't fix them.  Reboot back into linux and run fsck on it
>there.
>
Ok, Without writing anything to the disk I got the following output:
Warning: FAT32 support is still ALPHA.
File system has 12053628 clusters but only space for 3664510 FAT entries.
dosfsck 2.8 (28 Feb 2001)
dosfsck 2.8, 28 Feb 2001, FAT32, LFN

BTW, is the the newest version of fsck.msdos?
If you would like i can send you my fat.
Cheers,
Karsten