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Problems writing to Fat

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Catadmin

Programmer
Oct 26, 2001
3,097
US
Greetings, All!

My 4.11 server has 3 drives in it. 2 SCSI mirrored drives and 1 IDE drive. This is a "built from scratch" server and the outsource who did it is no longer in business (Much joy have I about this). A friend told me that the data is probably in the mirrored drive and the OS is probably in the IDE drive, but we can't be sure because none of the original tech specs are around. I'm getting "cannot write to FAT" errors which unload the server and kick everyone off.

I have, to this point, swapped out the SCSI cable and controller. I was looking for 8GB SCSI drives, but can't seem to find them. Now I'm wondering (after I discovered the IDE drive) if it is this drive that is the problem.

My question is, can I slave the IDE drive to a Windows machine to do a defrag and physical error check without messing up the OS (if it is on this drive) or is there a way to do it from the command prompt on the actual server?

HELP! Many thanks...



Catadmin - MCSA
 
A NetWare partition will not be viewable from Windows - it will most likely come up as a Non-DOS partition.

-----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
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DOH! The so-called IDE drive is another SCSI drive, just on a different cable (and different type of cable) than the mirrored set. I am seriously brain-dead today to think it was IDE.

So now I'm going to check the other SCSI cable and hope I don't have to figure out how to replace the hard drive when I don't have a working backup tape drive (cause the boss refused to replace it BEFORE we had this problem).

@sigh. I have management straight out of Dilbert....



Catadmin - MCSA
 
When you get FAT errors, that usually means a hardware failure. Maybe you already figured that out, but I can't tell from your post. You need to find out which exact drive is bad.

It would be handy to take a step back and find out which VOLUME the FAT errors are on. Then find out which Partition(s) the messed up Volume is on, and then find out which physical disk is culprit.

You may also be able to find this out by looking under MONITOR.NLM ==> STORAGE DEVICES, and then locating each physical drive and seeing if you can find something that is reporting REDIRECTED BLOCKS. That would be a dead giveaway.

Marv



Marvin Huffaker MCNE, CNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting
 
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