Hi Folks,
I have a dual boot Win98SE and XP Pro system.
I use the Win98SE for general and internet stuff and I boot into WinXP Pro for my photo and video editing tasks.
Because video takes up a lot of space I have 3 video drives of 120, 160 and 250 GBs
In order to keep everything compatible with both systems ALL drives are formatted in FAT32. This means I can't have a file bigger than 4GBs but it's better than not being able to access all the drives in both systems.
Now the problem is this, a video file recently created in XP (standard .avi file of size 3.8GBs) had disappeared when I tried to view it from Win98SE. In it's place was a strange folder called "Found.000" which contained hundreds and hundreds, literally, of file.chk files.
I was mortified as it took me ages to create that video!
However, on rebooting back to XP, Bingo, the video is back and the "Found.000" has gone.
So, what is happening please?
And more importantly how do I stop it and make sure I can see the files in both systems?
Best Regards.
P.S. I wasn't sure whether to post this under Win98 or XP so if the moderator thinks it should be moved, feel free!

As this really falls under the XP realm, I have moved the thread to that forum.

"found.000x" files are normally created by Windows' chkdsk utility when it finds lost clusters, cross-linked file data, etc.

A brief description from Microsoft can be found here:

Recovering Lost Clusters on FAT Volumes

Do all the FAT32 drives (partitions) have the same cluster size?

Hi Folks,
It’s all disappeared again so here’s some additional info/more details:

I have a dual boot system with Win98SE for general stuff and a second partition recently upgraded to WinXP Pro for video editing.
I've always used Partition Magic (V 8.1) for partitioning until now because Win98 was a bit lacking in that department. Partition Magic allocates cluster size dependent on the partition size. The partition sizes vary from 10GB to 50GB so the cluster sizes vary from 4K up to 32K. The system has been running like this for about 2 years.
Obviously all the files I use in my Win98 system are FAT32 but I recently bought a 250GB HDD (I knew a big project was coming up and I didn't have space in my system for all the footage).
I formatted the new drive into 2 x 120GB FAT32 partitions so I could use them in both systems.
I loaded some video (about 33GBs onto the first 120GB partition and all appeared ok. I could see it and use it from both systems.
I then loaded about 100GBs of video onto the second 120GB partition and all seemed OK.
All the footage is loaded throgh a video capture program which automatically splits any files that are too large for FAT32 into <4GB, usually about 3.9GBs.
But after checking my e-mails etc. this morning on Win98, I rebooted to Win XP and the drive has disappeared again!!!
I rebooted to 98 and not visible there either so I opened Partition Magic and the drive is shown as “Unallocated free space”.
Where’s my 12 hours of video. I’m mortified!!
So what's all this stuff about WinXP being more reliable?
None of my hard drives has ever failed on Win98 let alone disappeared!
The trouble is that if they don't even appear, you can't try any fancy recovery on them, can you?

Anyway, thanks very much for your support and suggestions.
I've looked at the links, thanks, and in fact spent all morning reading Microsoft articles about LBS, SP1 etc. Why are they so difficult to read? I've also spent quite a time on the manufacturer's site (Seagate) and found a wealth of info, tools, downloads etc.
After reading all the stuff I began to be convinced that this is some kind of 48bit LBA problem BUT, when I boot up my PC, during the boot, (So before even selecting any version of Windows) the BIOS detects my Promise Ultra PCI ATA controller card and then detects the discs as follows:
Seagate ST3120 shows as Disc 0 LBA 111GB
West Dig WD120 shows as Disc 1 LBA 111GB
Seagate ST3160 shows as Disc 2 LBA 149GB and
Seagate ST3250 shows as Disc 3 LBA 232GB
So the BIOS has no problems at this point, and as I said before, if I now boot into Win98SE, it has no problems with the first three drives including the Seagate 160 (which is obviously formatted as FAT32) and sees the 250GB drive if it’s formatted FAT32.
It's only when I go to XP I get the problems.
The large drive suddenly either disappears or on one occasion it appeared as 131GBs only, even though I had partitioned it as 2x120’s. When I looked in Partition Magic it said the rest of the drive was free space!.
Remember I'm on WinXP Professional (SP2) and I don't know all the differences between Pro and Home versions but one of them is that you can have dual boots on the same drive because XP pro is cleverer with the stuff it writes to the discs MBR.
Maybe that's the problem, it's too clever for itself with a dual boot on the same drive and an ATA controller card?
P.S. I've just sent all the same info to Seagate Support.
PPS. I’ve now tried formatting this drive using Seagate’s own set-up utility, using Disc Manager in XP, and using Partition Magic in both XP and 98. In every case it all works fine until I start booting into the other system, then either there or when I boot back, the top partition or whole drive disappears.
I’m normally very rational and logical but this is taking me to the limit.
The only thing I can think now is that there is some kind of addressing fault in the drive itself??
Regards and hope you can help.

(System: Dell Dimension, 1.4GHz, 512MB RAM, 120GB dual boot system drive, 120, 160, and 250GB video drives.)

Hi Folks,
Just to add my latest news to the above:
I definitely have an LBA problem.
Although my BIOS and Promise ATA controller card recognise all my drives at full capacity, I must not write anything above 131GBs. If I do, the address seems to "wrap round" and data at the bottom of that drive gets overwritten and corrupted.
I was convinced it wasn't this problem because I had a 160GB drive working perfectly, I thought.
However, I had never written higher than 131GBs on it. I tried it last night and...yep...same problem as on the 250GB, lost clusters, then found the bottom of the drive was corrupted and in fact then lost the whole partition!!.
So my hardware and BIOS seems to have LBA "ON" in that it recognises all drives and full capacity over 131GBs but my software seems to have LBA "OFF".
Does that make sense?
Regards.

I see this paragraph from the following thread:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/e...=en-us&m=1&p=1

You can partition the 250GB with a number of 3rd party partitioning
programs, including one available from the manufacturer. These will allow
full partitioning of the entire hard disk. This is assuming your bios is 48
bit lba capable. In the end, you can only store 128GB of data on the hard
drive before data corruption results. This a problem with Win98/98SE. Not
partitioning or a bios problem. Due to this, a 120GB hard drive is the
largest capacity available in today's market that can be fully utilized by
Win98 for file storage.