Help! Scan disk can not read FAT of C:

[Dethoff]

Today I was working on my computer when we had a momentary power outage causing the system to shutdown. When the computer restarted, I got the usual message about improper shut down and scandisk began to run to check drive C:. BUT, it could not finish and returned an error message that it could not read the FAT. I booted from a floppy and tried again with the same message. My other two drives, D: and E: are OK when I run scandisk on them. Windows is on C:. Fortuautely, all my programs and data are on D: and E:

I was eventually able to reboot into windows, and strangely, all seems to run well. In fact I am on line now without problems.

But, I still can not run scan disk on C:....same error message.

Is there a way to reconstruct or recover the FAT of C:?

Should I stop now, bite the bullet and reformat C: with a windows reinstall?

BTW, I ran a virus scanner which did not pick up antything.

I am running Win98SE with Fat 32

 

[corkyg]

There are ways to fix the FAT in C. If you have Norton Utilities, it can do that with its System Rescue Disks that it prepares for your system.

There are other places as well. Here is a good tutorial on the subject:

File Repair

 

[Dethoff]

In follow up to above, I tried unsuccesfully to reformat C:. In doing so I got the error message:

"Invalid media or Track 0 bad -disk unusable. Format terminated."


So, I went back to Fdisk, deleted all the logical drives, partitions etc. and started from scratch. After setting up the partions and drives again and rebooting I was still unable to format C: (same error message).

I downloaded Maxtor"s proprietary hard drive checker Powermax and ran it. It could not find the drive, which is odd because it does show up in my BIOS setup screen.

I can only assume at this point that the hard drive is bad.

Would you agree? Any other suggestions other than to RMA the drive?

Thanks,

 

[corkyg]

Sounds like the drive is kaput. Go RMA. The power blip could have caused it much grief. If Powermax can't see it, it is a big problem. Does Powermax do a total low level format/rebuild like IBMs Drive Fitness Test program? I had an IBM drive that was unreadable, but there was a long, full low level formatting part of their test utility that fixed it. It took about 13 hours for it to complete the job, but it worked.

 

[Dethoff]

There is a Write Disk Pack (low level format) program included in Powermax. I did not run this.

The instructions say to run this only if all other tests have passed, or instructed by tech support (closed today)

I really need to get this system up and running within the next 24 hours, so I will probably bite the bullet and go to my local Best Buy and get a replacement today. Assuming I get the drive RMA'd, I will stick it in another computerputer I have.

The shame of it is that the drive that got hosed is an 80 GB ...supposedly one of Maxtor's latest greatest 7200 ATA 133 drives, D740 series... which is supposed to be quieter and a little faster than previous models. II am running a MB that supports ATA 100. The only 80 GB replacements I can find locally are slightly older (100 ATA 7200 RPM drives) which are more expensive than what I paid online for the origonal drive.

Since I need the drive now, I guess I have no choice. Do you think the performance difference will be noticable?

thanks