fat directories dont match on my hard disk

[Guest]

Hey Guys
Just installed a new 30GB hard disk as a second drive in my pc.
The problem
When i run scandisk or norton disk doctor, it tells me the file allocation tables on the drive dont match. I also get new files appearing (file00001 etc), which i assume is lost fragments, clusters which have been saved as a file).

How its setup.
Its connected to my second IDE channel as the mater device using the end connector on the cable, the jumper on the back of the drive is also set for master. all connections are connected securely.

I used fdisk, choose large disk support.... but the drive expanded and wouldn't fit in my case any more ...sorry couldn't resist that..... Anyway after large disk support was enabled i created primary partition and just kept the drive as one partition.
I then rebooted and formatted the drive. Everything seemed fine, but of course wasn't.
I have tried fdisk a few times and formatting in both dos and windows, with same result.
The drive has no software saved on it yet because i think this could be a pretty major, software destroying problem.

The setup
I am running Win me and its a celeron 333, so its not exactly an ancient system and both hard drives are DMA33, with DMA enabled in windows/system
My boot drive is a 6.4GB with two partitions.
When windows assigned a drive letter for my new drive it put it between the c and d partitions of my old drive.

Ok i hope that plenty of info, so can anyone tell me why my file allocation tables dont match on this new drive, i thought of doing a low level format but i'm pretty reluctant and dont see that it would do much good anyway.

I'd appreciate any input on this, its a real pain.

 

[Grizely1]

It should fix it, or give you an option to fix it. Same thing happened to me when I installed a new drive. Clicked on "FIX" and everything went OK.

 

[Guest]

Hey grizely1
Thanks for replying

Tried it, says its fixed, but the problem appears straight away again. This is weird, Ive never had the problem installing a new drive before. cant think of any way to deal with it, ive poured over a technical manual i have here but it doesn't even mention the problem.

 

[Guest]

<b>.... but the drive expanded and wouldn't fit in my case any more...</b>

Good one!

Just a few thoughts/ideas. Not sure whether they will do any good...

1. Reverse cables from good drive to bad.

2. Delete drive and controller from system properties (I assume WinME is similar to 95/98) and reboot.

3. Over time I've seen listings of various, strange hard drive problems solved by upgrading motherboard BIOS.

4. I've also read of certain hard drives that are just plain incompatible with certain motherboards. Maxtor comes to mind right off the bat.

5. You could try connecting only the new drive and loading an OS to see whether the problem continues.

6. Of course, maybe the drive is just screwed up.

Mike

 

[Guest]

Oh yeah, re: low level format. I agree. If I had to do this on an new IDE drive, I'd consider the drive to be bad.

Mike

 

[Raistlin]

if its a celeron 333 you might need to flash the bios to get it to support a drive that big, what mb do you have?
most mb manufacters are easy to guess (web pages)
www.asus.com.tw
www.abit.com.tw
www.fic.com.tw
etc.

 

[Guest]

Yeah some of that is interesting, i should have thought of swapping the cable, but i just couldn't figure out what was going on.
No 2 is interesting, i hadn't thought of it at all.
I'll try swapping it into another pc as well.
Thanks for your reply

 

[Guest]

I'd considered the bios not supporting it before i bought the drive and had a lot of trouble finding a bios upgrade for this board, trouble was that its a generic piece of [-peep-], actually its got something to do with pc partner but their web site didn't have bios upgrades for this model
I really wanted a 40GB drive for it for video editing but i was sure that size wouldn't be supported unless the bios was flashed, so i compromised and got the 30GB which i was pretty sure all but the oldest BX boards would support, and it did detect the full 30GB okay so i dont think this is related to the problem. I'll try partitioning anyway and see what happens
This is someone elses pc, my own has an abit bh6 and a nice IBM drive, i always flashed it to the latest bios which i know supports up to 40GB so i'll try the drive in my own to see if it makes a difference.
Thanks