Can I find what file uses a particular hard disk cluster? 2

[Gouverneur]

I am having some problems with a partition on one of my hard disks. Scandisk hangs the system up at or near a particular cluster.

The manufacturer suggests a destructive fix. I have pretty good backups, but would like to minimize the amount of file restore work.

Is there a utility which will tell what file uses a particular cluster? If not, is there a utility which would allow me to browse the File Directory & FAT32 allocation tables? Dinosaur from prehistoric mainframe era
Eschew obfuscation!
If one hundred million people believe a foolish idea, it is still a foolish idea!

 

[dinosnake]

Absolutely! Norton DiskEdit. In this case, you would simply scan down to the FAT tables, scroll the cursor to the entry for that cluster and at the bottom the program will report which file has it allocated.

I use DiskEdit a lot and love it dearly. A must have for the hackers and crackers of the world. Your mileage may vary...

 

[RICHINMINN]

I agree with Dinosnake that Norton DiskEdit would be the tool to use to read the FAT and determine which file is using a particular cluster.

But....
The only versions of DiskEdit that I'm aware of will work only with 16-bit FATs, which may be a problem for you if you've Windows 98 Second Edition or newer.

Also, Norton DiskEdit hasn't been included in Norton products for quite some time, like back in version 4.0 and 5.0 of the Norton Utilities, which were available when Windows 3.1 was king. Norton SystemWorks 2000, 2001, and 2002 haven't had DiskEdit in them.

So...
*IF* you've got 16-bit FATs, and *IF* you can find a copy of Norton DiskEdit, it will do the job for you.

RR

 

[dinosnake]

Thank you very much, RichinMinn. May I mention one other thing that would do it? Norton's SpeedDisk for Windows 95/98 and above. If you click on a box in the Drive Map it will pop up a box showing you the cluster number and the file allocated to it (at least the versions that I have tried do this). Very graphical and kind of neat.

All this is why the C drive should never, never be anything other than a FAT16 drive. You can't repair by directly hex editing any other drive types, and repairing anything other than a FAT16 via repair software is a very hit or miss proposition. IBM's used to come with their C drive as FAT16 and the balance of space on the drive as FAT32 - for just that reason. Your mileage may vary...