can't defrag my HDD in win98se

[segask]

I get an error message saying "there is not enough memory to defragment the drive". I have 512 MB ram. The harddisk is 120 GB IBM/Hitachi deskstar 120GXP. I have used disk defrag before on 10 and 60 gig harddrives, but I think maybe not on this drive. I have used 60GB and have 55GB free space on this drive.

I checked M$ Knowledge Base and it said that defrag program gives you that error message when your cluster size is too small for the size of harddrive you are defragging. It says fix is to go manufacturers site and get software to fix, but I went to Hitachi site and they don't seem to have anything. When I bought this drive I partioned and formatted it using FDISK and FORMAT on win98se floopy startup diskette just like I have my other harddrives.

I tried to see what cluster size for that drive is and Sisoft Sandra tells me that cluster size for that drive is 0. Can that be?

Oh, and also, when I try to use scandisk on this drive from within win98se I get not enough memory error, but I can use scandisk on this drive in MS-DOS when I boot up from the floppy startup diskette.

 

[foxkm]

Sounds like your FAT32 table is just screwed up..

Its possible if you used an older version of Ontrack Drive overlay to quick format the drive. Try slaving the ddrive to an XP machine and run a newer version of Norton disk doctor, or go to the effort and get another drive and copy the data over, file by file, on another PC. Format your 120 again, (in windows 98 or 2k) and then copy file by file back.. Then you will need to run FDISK /mbr in dos to restore the bootsector if you used 2k to format.

Good luck

K