OK, I have a data drive formated as FAT32, and it holds all my, um, data. Well a few days ago Windows decided it would be alot of fun to just create a bunch of bad file names out of nowhere, almost rendering the drive inaccessible.

Well I have cleared that up, but Linux seems to think the drive is totally used up, when it still has 30GB left on it. Windows can still read and write to it normally, and if I delete something on that driVe from Linux, it shows that much free space.

Does anyone have any idea how to get Linux to see the drive normally?

I cant do a reformat, because I have not been a good girl and backed everything up yet. And I have tried un-mounting the drive, and then re-mounting it, and it is still all for not.

If I cant figure this out, I will not be able to get rid of Windows. Dont let this happen, PLEASE!

What is the error message linux gives you when you try to move something to that drive?

You may want to reinstall, seriously. This is the best thing to do, especially since windows probably screwed up that drive in some way. Besides, its good to get as much pracice formatting and reinstalling as you can.


-IX

reinstalling? you've not been using linux for long have you? reinstalling is ALWAYS a last option.

i'd suggest using dosfsck / fsck.vfat (same file) on the drive.

I will run the dosfsck command and see what turns up.

I definately dont want to do a reinstall. That is for newbies, not experienced users!

or you!