Ok, so I noticed that there were several corrupt files on my 500GB External USB HDD, so I ran dosfsck on it. After 48 hours it still had not finished, and I needed to ctrl+c fsck (can't remember why). Apparently, that was a bad idea. I've figured that out from other forums etc. Well, I maganed to somewhat fix my mangled filesystem (it's FAT32 btw) by running fsck again (which took around 72 hrs), but now windows doesn't read it, and fdisk -l returns

(Emphasis added)

For some reason now it's a Linux "system" type instead of FAT32. AFAIK, Windows XP is still supposed to be able to read ext2/3 filesystems just fine anyway. So...

1. Is this really a "Linux" filesystem, instead of FAT32?
2. Is it even possible to reformat an entire filesystem without loosing all data on it?
3. Why doesn't windows read this, and how do I make it do so?

TYVM in advance for any help.

Maybe the system id got changed when running fsck.
Is the disk accessible in linux ?

Try this [You can revert back if it doesnt work]

In linux login as root
If the external harddisk is sdb , run

$ fdisk /dev/sdb

In fdisk type the following

t
<partition number>
<corresping id> [ex. c W95 FAT32 (LBA)]
w
q


Then boot to windows and check if the disk is accessible.


- zulfi

A am afraid no, you can't reformat a entire filesystem without loosing data.

Probably a silly question, but did yo try to mount /dev/sda1 under Linux, either with "-t auto" or "-t <file_system>" ?

There seems to be some confusion - I failed to mention that I can read/write to it just fine with Linux. Accessing it w/Windows is my only problem. I mount it using "pmount /dev/sda1", or "mount /dev/sda1 /mount/point".

Zulfilee, I just tried your suggestion. I'm rebooting now to see if it works. Will report back.

EDIT: Ok, it didn't work. Here's all I can get in windows...

http://troop913.site40.net/temp/other/disks.png

Bump