Re: disk repair w/ XP?
- From: "Ken Blake, MVP" <kblake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 08:09:15 -0700
On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:51:30 -0400, "John" <noreply@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I recently noticed that there does not seem to be any sort of disk repair
utility w/ XP.
I have a HP desktop PC w/ W98 that will not boot up. It goes straight into a
DOS version of ScanDisk, and when it identifies errors in the boot sector
and asks me whether I want to skip, fix, or whatever, it doesn't respond to
the keyboard. I was able to take the HD out, put it into a USB external
case, plug it into my laptop (which has XP Pro) and I can read files from
it. I noticed that there is no ScanDisk w/ XP.
Yes there is, but the name is different. The XP equivalent is called
"chkdsk"
I ran Disk Defrag and there
did not seem to be any options for fixing errors during defrag like there
were w/ W98.
My question in a nutshell is: Is there a way for me to repair the errors in
the boot sector on this HD w/ it plugged in as an external drive to my XP
laptop (something like scandisk for XP) and then put it back into the other
computer and have it boot up normally?
No guarantees that it will fix the errors, or if it does whether it
will be bootable, but you can try chkdsk.
Otherwise I assume the only option is to reformat the drive w/ the laptop,
Why? Why not just format the drive on the desktop. Boot from a
diskette and format it from there.
in which case I would imagine that the bad sectors would be marked bad and
would not be re-used.
It depends entirely on what errors there are and how bad they are. Do
not assume that using scandisk, chkdsk, or reformatting will always
turn a problem drive into a usable one. Sometimes drive failures are
permanent ones.
In the meantime I would just have to rescue whatever
data I could using the external case and the laptop.
Then the other question is that the laptop uses NTFS.
No. The hard drive on the laptop uses NTFS. I don't mean to nitpick,
but it's important that you understand that XP can use any and all
combinations of NTFS, FAT32, FAT16, and FAT12, on different drives, or
even on different partitions on the same physical drive.
Can I install W98 on a
NTFS drive
No. Windows 98 will not even see an NTFS drive.
or would I need to have the option to format it FAT32 (and does
XP offer that option)?
Yes and yes, as long as you don't try to create a partition larger
than 32GB. XP will accept a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB if
created externally, but you can't create one within it.
--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Windows - Shell/User
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