Shoutbox

and in response to your edit

READ THE POST PROPERLY

IT READS

Chkdsk has discovered freespace marked as allocated within the master file table reserved space

and

chkdsk has discovered freespace marked as allocated within the master file table

Which doesn't take away space for the machine as it couldn't use it anyway

what happens is that the mft cannot expand into this sector as freespace has been allocated to that portion of the mft

something i should have done is taken a screenshot of O&O defrag so i could show you that files had been moved for no reason into the mft reserved space zone

AND also, this space is meant to be locked

which means that space isn't being taken away

space is being added

but its not needed as i've got 32gbs of data on an 80gb drive

so theres no reason to put files in the mft zone

and also

i haven't had a crosslinked sector since windows 98

and even if i do, most files are backed up by system restore anyway so the minute one gets messed up,. its replaced by the automatic file protection within XP

cookie. you don't wanna go up against me when it comes to file systems and issues, coz i can't say without a doubt that Fat32 is not as much as a problem as you spin doctors put on it

heres my experience with ntfs

Chkdsk has found errors within the mft
repairing errors (errors never repaired, seems they can't be ( also a bug within ntfs))
Chkdsk has repaired the mft

reboot
chkdsk has discovered that freespace has been allocated in the area marked as mft reserved space
repairing the mft (never repaired)

after backing all my data up

which btw was to a ntfs drive

there was no problems

i backed up with the microsoft backup utility which backed up everything remarkly well (for a microsoft program)

i then restored everything onto Fat32 and ran chkdsk

chdsk has finished with no errors

reboot

chkdsk has finished with no errors

oh i thought lets see

* squall_leonhart69r flicks power off on psu
* squall_leonhart69r turns it back on

windows starts, tells me that windows wasn't shut down and needs to chk the dsk for inconsistancies

chkdsk has finished with no errors

so you see, in my personal experiance. with 5000 other pieved off users who also have the same error as me, Fat32 is the better operating system

Stability wise, performance wise (when considering ntfs has to update everyfile as its used which slows things down)

the hard disk i backed up to never got an error

i believe this is becoz the windows backup utility builds one solid image file and not move the files themselves

i then moved 4 folders containing around 4000 files to the drive and then started recieving the error on it

i formatted. errors gone

copied 2 different folders with dvd image files in them

no problem

i then copied my download folder which has files ranging from sizes 100kb to 100mb+

i recieve the error again

my conclusion is that the volume bitmap is very volatile, and can not handle a mix of large and small files being transferred to it at once.

i have sent and recieved mail from a contact at microsoft who also noted the same problem and informed me that i should return to Fat32 if i handle alot of files

so cookie

i don't have to research, i know how both file systems work

throught my investigation into the problem i learnt alot about ntfs metafiles and metatags

i learnt what each $file handled and what errors can occur in them

and have come to the conclusion

IF YOU ARE GOING TO USE THIS EXTERNAL DRIVE AS A BACKUP DRIVE OR STORE LARGE AMOUNTS OF SMALL AND LARGE DATA ON IT

THE SUGGESTION FROM MICROSOFT ITSELF IS TO PARTITION IT SEVERAL WAYS AND FORMAT IT FAT32

Partition the drive with seagate disc wizard
as partition magic causes the drive to have to many logical blocks for some reason rendering the drive unbootable as such

either way its your choice

4kb clusters are the best becoz they prevent space wastage

partition magic will not allow alot of discs to be partitioned to fat32 at 4k but seagate discwizard does it well

i would suggest 4 125gb partitions allowing 4 new drives

eitherway

be sure you know all the risks before using ANY file system

don't listen to what just me an cookie have said

these days you can also create your disc to a raw partition and read and write to it like that

this is actually the most secure way of storing data as its not very easy to read raw file systems without having the required software

alot of networks use raw file systems to back up onto these days