OT: corrupted FATs on an external drive

[Robin Laing]

peter kostov wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have a Samsung mp3 player that doesn't want to format his drive.
> When I run fsck on it I get:
> 
> # fsck.vfat -rtlV -v /dev/sdb1
> dosfsck 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)
> dosfsck 2.11, 12 Mar 2005, FAT32, LFN
> Checking we can access the last sector of the filesystem
> Boot sector contents:
> System ID "MSDOS5.0"
> Media byte 0xf8 (hard disk)
>       512 bytes per logical sector
>      4096 bytes per cluster
>         1 reserved sector
> First FAT starts at byte 512 (sector 1)
>         2 FATs, 16 bit entries
>    126464 bytes per FAT (= 247 sectors)
> Root directory starts at byte 253440 (sector 495)
>       512 root directory entries
> Data area starts at byte 269824 (sector 527)
>     63127 data clusters (258568192 bytes)
> 63 sectors/track, 255 heads
>        50 hidden sectors
>    505550 sectors total
> Starting check/repair pass.
> Both FATs appear to be corrupt. Giving up.
> 
> I have tried mkdosfs with no luck.
> I will appreciate very much if anyone can tell mi what to do to get it 
> back to work.
> 
> Peter
> 


If the mp3 player isn't working at all, try to check and see if you can 
change the drive partition(s).  Doing this may fix the problem.

Also check to see if there is new software for the mp3 player as this 
could fix the problem.

-- 
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Robin Laing