wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock or . . .
 

I have two physical hard drive in my computer laid out as below:

Disk /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc: 4303 MB, 4303756800 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 555 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 * 1 555 4195768+ b Win95 FAT32

Disk /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/disc: 30.7 GB, 30750031872 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3972 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part1 * 1 812 6138688+ 83 Linux
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part2 813 3972 23889600 5 Extended
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part5 813 879 506488+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part6 880 2296 10712488+ 83 Linux
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part7 2297 3972 12670528+ b Win95 FAT32



The first windows partition--hda1 mounts fine. I am trying to mount the second windows partition. When I type:

mount -t vfat /dev/hdb7 /mnt/share

I get the following message:

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdb7,
or too many mounted file systems

Now, I can mount hda1 at either /mnt/windows or /mnt/share. I can't mount hdb7 at either /mnt/windows or /mnt/share. I even unmounted hda1 entirely and tried to mount hdb7 and still without any success.

Also, I can access the hdb7 partition when booting into win98.

I realize the error message I am getting is a fairly common one as my searching has turned up many other cases, but I haven't found a solution that works for me. The mount command that works for my hda1 windows drive will not work for my hdb7.

Is it possible that I really do have a corruption (even though windows will read the drive perfectly fine)? If so, how would I go about correcting it?

I have suffered other problems that have been "supposedly" related to superblocks as you will see at this thread. I don't know if this is a red herring or not.

I did find someone else who seems to be having the same problem as me at: http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-in.../msg29483.html Unfortunately it doesn't seem like anyone solved his problem either :(

Any help would be much appreciated.

Update
 

Update:

I tried to go and mount from the Mandrake control center. Clicked on the mount button for the partition which flashed a quick message I couldn't see. Went to console and typed dmesg and got:

FAT: bogus logical sector size 0
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev 03:47.

What should I do?

This drive isn't my primary windows drive and doesn't have any critical files on it, so if I must reformat or something I can. But is there any other option? And why can windows read this (possibly corrupted) drive if Linux can't?

Thanks very much for any help.