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Old September 28th 17, 07:59 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_2_]
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Posts: 54
Default Cant access some of a Partition

In message ,
writes:
On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 15:43:15 -0000 (UTC), "Auric__"
wrote:

anonymous wrote:

It appears that one of my hard drives is going to crap. It's my second
(slave) drive, which has 3 partitions on it. 120gb IDE drive. Formatted
to Fat32. This is a Win98se computer.

Oddly, from Dos, I can see all the folders in that partition. From


How about from a DOS window?

Windows, I only see about half of them. This partition contains storage
files. Most are backed up, but there is a large folder containing some
valuable info that I do not have backed up. In fact I first noticed this
problem when I wanted to backup that folder to am external HDD.

I ran Scandisk, first the fast method, which told me to use the thorough
method. I ran the thorough one, which took hours. While running, it got
to one cluster and said that one can not be fixed. The rest of that
partition tested ok.

[]
The computer is too old to boot from USB. (from the year 2000), and it
dont have a CD drive (I have no need for CDs).


(Does it have a floppy drive? Not that that's relevant to this
discussion.)

I dod have another desktop computer that has XP installed. But that is a
much newer machine and it has some other kind of drive, (not IDE). I
think it's Sata or something like that. So I dont think I can just plug
this IDE drive into it.


If the drives are connected by narrow cables (about 1/2"), usually red,
then it's SATA. The _motherboard_ may have an IDE connector on it (it's
only relatively recently that motherboards without one have become
common), so you might be able to use that (with the existing ribbon
cable). As long as the BIOS doesn't try to boot from it.

My guess is that the easiest way is to buy one of those kits that allow
any hard drive to be converted to an external USB drive. I plan to order
one of them from ebay today.


There are roughly two sorts: an external housing, and a bare-bones sort
like these:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...o+IDE&_sacat=0
I'd say just for diagnostic purposes, go for that sort rather than the
housing. But make sure it's one that has a power supply (whether housing
or bare-bones) - a 3.5" (desktop) drive is likely to need more power,
especially at startup, than USB can provide.

I dont think the whole drive is failing either. It has 3 partitions. G:
H: I: (H: and I: work fine). But I think once a drive starts to show bad
clusters, it's starting to fail, and I should replace it.

What sort of utility will check SMART?


There are lots; the one I use is DiskCheckup, from PassMark
https://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm; it still works on
XP-SP3, so you should be able to use it on your other computer. (I don't
know any for '98, but I think there were some.)

The Scandisk.log file shows the bad cluster is NOT being used, so
nothing should be lost. I can only figure the problem is in the MBR.


I'm not saying you're wrong, but I must say I'm puzzled how you came to
that conclusion (-:!

Just for the heck of it, I loaded Partition Magic, and PM showed that
partition to be filled to capacity. Yet, going to My Computer and
showing Properties for that G: partition, shows it's only half full
(which I know is true). It's a 50gb partition and contains about 24gb of
data.

Interesting.
[]
hundred sub folders. I dont mind copying each one folder by folder, but
all long filenames are going to be lost, and that will mean hundreds of
hours spent to rename everything back to normal. The data is very
important, so if I must do that, I will. Then too, I will have to do it


I seem to remember DOS utilities to handle long filenames, which _might_
help. I don't remember any details.
[]
It's amazing how quickly one or two bad clusters can totally screw up a
whole drive or partition. I'd think that scandisk would have enough


It does seem odd - especially as you can see them in DOS. I wonder: does
your BIOS have the ability to tweak the computer to a lower speed to see
if it would work then? (Though I suspect I'm barking up a wrong tree.)

sense to mark these bad clustera as BAD, and leave everything else
intact. I guess scandisk is not a very useful utility.


Well, if you run it again, it'll be interesting to see if it names the
same clusters. I say this because modern drives have electronics which
move things around - the clusters that the computer thinks it's seeing
aren't directly mapped to ones on the disc, because the drive
electronics themselves swap things around to replace bad sectors. It'd
be interesting to find out if your drive is before or after this started
to happen.

The Scandisk.log file shows this:
(Copied from Scandisk.log)


Drive G_120 (G contained the following errors:

[]
ScanDisk could not properly read from or write to cluster 57856.
This cluster is currently unused.
Resolution: Repair the error
Results: Error was corrected as specified above.


How did you specify? (Hopefully, mark bad sectors to avoid future use.)

ScanDisk could not properly read from or write to cluster 135122.
This cluster is currently unused.
Resolution: Repair the error
Results: Error was not corrected.
Results: Correction failed


That's puzzling.
[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

No, I haven't changed my mind - I'm perfectly happy with the one I have, thank
you.