Puppy corrupts my Windows HD?

[bombayrockers]

I am running a frugal install of puppy 1.0.7 standard + usr_more.sfs (KDE) on hda3 (FAT), all other puppy files and downloads are also stored on this partition. Last night I started a download and left puppy running overnight. In the morning almost half of the data on hda3 was gone including usr_cram.fs and usr_more.sfs . I ran chkdsk from windows and found the missing files as a 500mb chk file.

And this the second time this has occured. Earlier this had occured when I was using puppy 1.0.4 and trying to make my first dotpup.

Is it a hardware issue or somethings wrong with puppy ?

[MU]

Which kernel?
I've read that K2.6 was used in an older puppy (102?), but then removed again because people reported NTFS-bugs.
Maybe this affects your drives, too?
You say, it is FAT, but the same harddisk has NTFS-partitions, too?

But I don't know details about that.
Mark

[bombayrockers]

puppy 1.0.7 standard (k 2.4.29) not 2.4.29-lck

[MU]

Then I have no further idea
Was just a guess.
Mark

[MU]

When you run "scandisk" in Windows or DOS, does it report bad blocks?

[bombayrockers]

Yes it did report bad blocks initially but not after I used error checking in windows xp to correct the bad blocks.

Also, this is not related to my hd problem but I have noted that files deleted by puppy on my fat partition are not really deleted they always show up as checkdisk files when I run scandisk from windows.

[Guest]

files deleted by puppy on my fat partition are not really deleted they always show up as checkdisk files

it's ok to write to an vfat (fat32) partition
it is not ok to write to an NTFS partition

you have Win XP installed (XP has chkdsk ... win 9x has scandisk)

if you installed XP on a fat32 partition, it should be ok ... i run XP on a fat 32 partition, so i can read/write to it from Linux/DOS/Win 9x

but usually Wn XP is installed on and installs to an NTFS partition ... if you try to create, write to, delete files on an NTFS partition you will get exactly what you are getting ... a corrupted file system

if you really do have a fat32 file system, then if it is already corrupted, writing to it will usually cause more corruption ... and chkdsk may not be able to fix it

you should be able to write to /root and to any dir in /root without problems ... but you can not write to /mnt/home if it is an NTFS file system

is Puppy shutting down properly? ... you must never just turn off your computer, you must exit Puppy cleanly from the menu ... did you symlink /usr/bin/bash to /bin/sh ? ... if you did, you must symlink it to Busybox again before shutting Puppy down

[MU]

Bad block usually indicate a "dying" harddisk.
Windows marks them, so that they are not used, but usually soon new bad blocks will appear.

Blocks beside the bad ones still may work, but they already may be "weak", causing unpredictable results.

One thing you might try:
repartition the defect area.
For example, if it is 10 GB, and the blocks are at 7 GB, then create:
6 GB
2 GB (defect and not used)
2 GB

With some luck this prevents further damage, but don't trust that solution, and just store unimportant Data.

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chkdsk save Filefragments of corrupted files.
Usually they are broken, and unusable, maybe special programs can save parts of them.

Mark