Fat32 partion causes restarts

Ok, I'm 10 hours orthos stable. I have fold weeks at a time in linux perfectly stable. My system is stable. I've even dropped down to stock clocks and this happens.

My partion scheme:
Partion1 = 30 gig NTFS (windows) [10 gigs free]
Partion2 = 2 gig Linux swap
Partion3 = 162.8 gig FAT32 storage [9 gigs free]
Partion4-8 Linux partitions.

The issue:
Anytime I try to run a program or a game of off my fat32 Partion in Windows XP Pro Service Pack 2, all goes well. The program loads, I start doing a task in the program, or start to load the game. As soon as I start to play the game, like move around, I get a blank screen, and the system restarts. This only happens in windows.

This fat32 partion has remained through countless different linux installs, and 2 windows XP Pro installs. I can access the files in windows and zip and unzip files fine. Its only when running a program off of it that it crashes and burns. I've run fsck (linux disk/partition check utility) and all was good. No bad sectors nothing.

Another issue I have is with time, I don't know if its related or not, but every time I restart into windows my clock is set 4 hours and 30 minutes ahead. I have to adjust it. Then when I reboot into linux the linux clock is 2 hours behind. I think thats just a sync issue with the OS's and the system clock, but just thought I'd mention that too.

Anyone had issue like I am having with a fat32 partion?

Is fsck as likely to find a problem as chkdsk /f within Windows?

conway said:

Is fsck as likely to find a problem as chkdsk /f within Windows?

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I'm not positive, but I'd bet its equal or better.

You might give chkdsk a try anyway just for the hell of it. Certainly shouldn't hurt anything. Although it's "officially supported" I have had weird issues with fat32 under XP on various machines that have seemed to magically disappear once the partitions were converted to ntfs. I understand you need the fat32 partition for proper filesystem access under Linux, so hopefully you'll get it resolved.

conway said:

You might give chkdsk a try anyway just for the hell of it. Certainly shouldn't hurt anything. Although it's "officially supported" I have had weird issues with fat32 under XP on various machines that have seemed to magically disappear once the partitions were converted to ntfs. I understand you need the fat32 partition for proper filesystem access under Linux, so hopefully you'll get it resolved.

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chkdsk came back clean.

Is it an option to stop using FAT32 and move to ntfs? With NTFS3G, I'm not sure why you would want to be running FAT anymore.

I.M.O.G. said:

Is it an option to stop using FAT32 and move to ntfs? With NTFS3G, I'm not sure why you would want to be running FAT anymore.

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Well while reading is perfectly fine with NTFS3G, writing is experimental and considered unstable. Writing works fine, but sometimes if the NTFS3G encryption gets off slightly windows will no longer detect the harddrive and its possible the partition will become completely unaccessible to any OS, and it no longer has a valid encryption. That still happens enough to warrant the need for a Fat32 drive.

That perspective is outdated. You would be hard pressed to find anyone using the current incarnation of NTFS3G who has encountered said problem.

I used it on a heavy data transfer machine and it never so much as gave me a hiccup - this was for a 4 or 5 month stretch. Data writes were on the scale of tens of GB on a daily basis.

I'm more afraid of fat than NTFS3G. Check out the stable release. http://www.ntfs-3g.org/

I.M.O.G. said:

That perspective is outdated. You would be hard pressed to find anyone using the current incarnation of NTFS3G who has encountered said problem.

I used it on a heavy data transfer machine and it never so much as gave me a hiccup - this was for a 4 or 5 month stretch. Data writes were on the scale of tens of GB on a daily basis.

I'm more afraid of fat than NTFS3G.

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Really? Well thats a bit of relief. Whats the best way to convert my fat32 partition to NTFS? I'd prefer not to loose all my data, but I can move most of it to other partitions in case I need to.

Shelnutt2 said:

Really? Well thats a bit of relief. Whats the best way to convert my fat32 partition to NTFS? I'd prefer not to loose all my data, but I can move most of it to other partitions in case I need to.

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If you do so in Windows, convert driveletter: /fs:ntfs

Heh... Well I didn't say I knew how you should go about it, just that ntfs would probably be a better solution... I dont know anything about how safe it is to convert Fat.

I.M.O.G. said:

Heh... Well I didn't say I knew how you should go about it, just that ntfs would probably be a better solution... I dont know anything about how safe it is to convert Fat.

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"Safe enough"

I've run the conversion on the system partition of tons of machines in my day, never had a problem with it.