Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!image.soe.clarkson.edu!wargopl
From: wargopl@image.soe.clarkson.edu (Peter L. Wargo)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: What should I do when HD has lost clusters ?
Message-ID: <1990Jun3.000906.5873@sun.soe.clarkson.edu>
Date: 3 Jun 90 00:09:06 GMT
References: <10755@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Sender: wargopl@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Peter L. Wargo)
Organization: Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY
Lines: 33

From article <10755@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>, by wjin@cs.purdue.EDU (Woochang Jin):
> I have a 42 M Fujizu MFM hard drive and when I 'chkdsk', it complains :
> 11 lost clusters. convert to files ?
> My friend advised to reformat the disk drive. So I backed up the whole
> disk and reformatted it using 'Disk Manager' which was provided with the
> hard disk. I chkdsk'ed and it was ok. But after a week, the lost clusters
> happened again. But the whole thing seems to work O.K.

Well, the problem lies within an application program, not your hard disk.
Lost clusters occur when the FAT (File Allocation Table) on your hard disk
'looses track' of those clusters & cannot recover them.  (*Brief* analogy...)
Some programs may write data to the disk & delay updating the FAT for speed
reasons.  (Rare, but possible)  As a result, if the computer gets turned off
before the FAT *is* updated, the clusters become 'loose cannons'.


> Do I leave it or have to do something for this ?
> Could anybody tell me why this happens and what I should do this case ?
> I saw an advertisement of SpinRite II and it seems to fix almost everything
> in hard disks. Will it be of any help ?

As far as spinrite goes, it is excellent for testing & doing low-level format.
I use it for keeping my two HD's (115M) in peak operating condition.  But, I
dont think it would help in this case.  Buy it anyway, tho.  It's well worth
the price.

Pete

-- 
Peter L. Wargo - wargopl@sun.soe.clarkson.edu, amoung others...
"I don't believe it - I just spent 4 years at an expensive university-
 and I end up as a top-40 DJ..."