FAT32 corruption writing from Linux

[Alex Janssen]

David Woyciesjes said the following on 10/07/2005 12:55 PM:

> Alex Janssen wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am having trouble with a mounted FAT32 file system.  I've never 
>> experienced this before.
>> I set up the  30GB FAT32 partition, created with Win XP, to share 
>> data between WinXP and Linux on a dual-boot system.
>>
>> Some times, more often than not, Windows reports crosslinked files 
>> and invalid FAT entries after writing to this drive with Linux apps, 
>> Thunderbird and GIMP I have seen cause this because I use them most 
>> often with this partition.
>
>
>     You might want to check out Microsoft's web site. I seem to recall 
> reading about a ~30GB limit for FAT 32 partitions. Or that might apply 
> to Windows 98 on a FAT32 partition.
>     Either way, you might want to try shrinking it down to 25GB or so, 
> and see what happens.
>
You are right about the partition size limitation due to the allocation 
unit size limitation to 16384 bytes.  These FAT32 partitions were 
created with Win XP itself, so they were within its' limitations.

I believe I have just mounted it wrong.
I was using the following in /etc/fstab :
/dev/hdc2       /d2             vfat    rw,users,noauto,conv=b  0       0

I apparently should have been using :
/dev/hdc2       /d2             vfat    iocharset=utf8,umask=000        
0      0

There is also the possibility that writing to the FAT partition while 
windows is hibernating will cause windows to use invalid information to 
access the FAT resulting in possible corruption.

I am testing this mount currently.

Alex

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