Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ames!mailrus!umix!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!Glenn_A_Story
From: Glenn_A_Story@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: How do ya when your FATs corrupt?
Message-ID: <4280@cup.portal.com>
Date: 3 Apr 88 01:12:38 GMT
References: <9765@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <4534@sigi.Colorado.EDU>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 16
XPortal-User-Id: 1.1001.1401


>>I use the Norton utilities to save a copy of my FAT table, but how do I
>>know if the FAT was good to start with?

>Most of the time a FAT failure will be catastrophic.  You will get
>death messages from DOS.  You also can check for it's condition
>by using Norton DT,  it will check your FAT area.

I believe that Norton's DT only _reads_ the FAT and reports on disk read 
errors.  To check the accuracy of the FAT, use the DOS-supplied utility
CHKDSK.  This program will report such integrity problems as multiply assigned
clusters, unassigned clusters, etc., all of which are errors in the data
stored in the FAT (or in a directory, which contains a pointer to a FAT entry).

Regards,
Glenn