i've got a problem with FAT partition mounting. i've entered the following line to /etc/fstab

/dev/hda5 /mnt/fat vfat auto,umask=0 0 0

it mounts normally during system startup, but after several minutes i get the following message in log file:

Feb 12 11:50:45 debian -- MARK --
Feb 12 12:09:38 debian kernel: Filesystem panic (dev 03:05).
Feb 12 12:09:38 debian kernel: FAT error
Feb 12 12:09:38 debian kernel: File system has been set read-only
Feb 12 12:09:38 debian kernel: Directory 116: bad FAT

as you can see after that it's read only. what is wrong? it used to work fine on the same kernel version before. when i used RH9 it worked fine too.

You probably damaged somewhere in the process.

Have you tried fscking it?

well i thought of it, but i dunno id fsck is safe for fat32 partitions. i don't want to lose any files stored there. should i do fsck or windows scandisk?

scandisk is safer, but i've used dosfsck hundreds of times on a fat32 partition, and i don't
think i've ever lost anything.